Bakery in Orlando

Next door to Netto Ice Cream sits Pão Gostoso Bakery, a bustling cake and pastry shop where expats and visitors alike can be found downing açai, cashew or fresh cane juice while chomping on assorted “salgadinhos,” or small baked goods. Of note are the traditional condensed milk and cheese breads and the scrumptious éclairs, puddings and cakes beckoning from the large glass display case. You’ll also find fried chicken sticks, empanadas and kibbeh-like meatball patties, as well as hearty sandwiches oozing creamy catupiry cheese. Though English is spoken, it wouldn’t hurt to brush up on your Portuguese.

After maneuvering through the labyrinthine roadways inside the Waterford Lakes Town Center, then downing some quaggy shepherd's pie for dinner, I was looking forward to a superlatively sugary finale at Sweet!, a colorful joint specializing in the city's latest dessert trend ' cupcakes. The fact that it happened to be the eve of National Cupcake Day further glazed my confectionery anticipation of a post-meal chocopalooza, and so into the queue I went.

If sweet was what my raging sweet tooth wanted, sweet! was what I got. In both the custard-filled, ganache-dipped Boston cream cupcake ($3) and the vertically decadent high-hat chocolate cupcake ($3), chef-owner Hollis Wilder certainly didn't skimp on the sugar. That's not to say the cupcakes weren't good ' they were properly moist and cakey, not dry in the least ' but when I thought I felt craters forming in the enamel of my teeth, I had to admit these treats were too cloying for me to fully enjoy. Milk is sold by the glass ($1), but it would take a quart to neutralize the candied effects of a single cupcake.

With roughly two dozen flavors on offer on a rotating basis, maybe the overpowering sugariness was just the luck of the draw. Regardless, sugarphiliac teenyboppers and college kids seem to get a kick out of the cutesy café's fare.

New Yorkers like secrets, and (since 1936) one of the most closely kept has been the Valencia Bakery, known in Manhattan and the Bronx for a particular style of cake -- rich buttercream frosting covering super-moist white cake with three layers of real pineapple filling.

Well, the secret is out in Casselberry, where you'll find Ray Perez's own Valencia Bakery. It is filled with sugary pasteles (pastries from Puerto Rico), including cannolilike sweets with flaky outsides and custard fillings, and turnovers filled with guava jelly. There are also pastelitos (like empanadas), but they sell out fast.

Well, the secret is out in Casselberry, where you'll find Ray Perez's own Valencia Bakery. It is filled with sugary pasteles (pastries from Puerto Rico), including cannolilike sweets with flaky outsides and custard fillings, and turnovers filled with guava jelly. There are also pastelitos (like empanadas), but they sell out fast.

Then, of course, there are the cakes, actually made in the original New York bakery and shipped down. Valencia has only been open since November, but more than 800 of these beauties already have graced local palates.