Last Saturday, Adam and I were invited on a sweet dessert tasting tour of in the city.

Sugartooth Tours, formed by best friends who bonded over a love of theatre and ice cream, offers several NYC-based dessert tours.  Right now all of the tours take place in Manhattan, but Allyson gave me the inside scoop that they are testing out a Brooklyn tour to be debuted this summer.  Some of the tours include a Village Cupcake Crawl, an Ice Cream Summer Sundays Frozen Treats Tour, several mixed treats tours around Hell’s Kitchen, Broadway, and Chelsea/the West Village, and the option of personalized itineraries for small group celebrations.

The tours range in size from 3 – 16 people and are guided by one of the knowledgeable and friendly co-founders.  You walk from nosh to nosh – usually 6 stops in total and no more than 2 miles – learning about the history of the neighborhood on your way.  It takes about 2 and half hours from start to finish.  Tickets are $50 per person and include all tastings.  You also have a bit of time at the stops to purchase additional items to take home if you are so inclined, but there is definitely no pressure to buy anything.

The Chelsea/West Village option, the Sweeter Than Sugar Dessert Tour, is available year-round at 4pm on Sundays.  For a limited time, they have updated it with a Valentine’s theme for the upcoming Festival of Love and Candy.  The updated tour includes Valentine’s history trivia – most of it more gory than gushy – and is taken in pairs so you can experience the fun with your sweetheart (or your mom, no judgment!).  This is the tour we were invited to take.

Special hours for the Sweeter Than Sugar Valentine’s Tour are February 13th, 14th, & 15th at 5:30 PM and February 14th & 15th at 2PM.  If you’re interested, you can sign up on the website here.

General thoughts on the tour: 

• Adam and I both had a wonderful time (the 2.5 hours flew by) and agree that we would like to check out Sugartooth Tours again on our own this summer.
• The tours run rain or shine, so be sure to dress accordingly.  We got lucky with a “warm” 40 degree night, but you kept moving when you were outside so there wasn’t much time to get cold.
• Bring water!  Sugar makes me quite thirsty.
• We ended up taking home lots of leftovers, so save yourself some extra room in your bag.

The stops:

{1} We started at City Cakes, who are known for their gorgeous cake decorating but have also branched out into giant 1/2 pound cookies that are baked 3 times and reshaped in between trips to the oven.

Some of the flavors included chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, ginger spice, triple chocolate with clove, and peanut butter with Reeses Pieces.  Adam I got red velvet stuffed with cream cheese frosting.

Crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, this was delicious.  Note – you got the entire cookie, they just cut it in halves so you can eat while you walk.

{2} Next we headed into Chelsea Market to Amy’s Bread for hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows.

Their hot chocolate is pure ganache mixed with steamed milk.  It wasn’t as gloriously thick as the stuff from Max Brenner, but it was flavorful and not too sweet.  The marshmallows were the best we’ve ever had.  Adam usually turns up his nose at marshmallows on cocoa but even he loved it.

Note – we were encouraged to fill up the (full-sized) cup, and even refill for the road, but I was trying to pace myself.

{3} Then we trekked on the High Line – gorgeous at night – to Sugar Factory, a Vegas import famous for their rhinestone-bedazzled lollipop sticks, of course.

They also had giant walls of candy and we were given small take-out boxes and told to go crazy.

They had a good variety, including cola bottles, chocolate-covered gummy bears, and several themed options for Valentine’s.

{4} Heading into West Village, we stopped at Chocolate Bar where we were taught the proper way to taste a truffle.  CB was a cute spot, boasting many nicely wrapped, fun flavors.

Adam was enticed into buying (and eating) a full-sized candy bar!

They had a good variety of truffles, and I choose grapefruit and cajeta.

Cajeta = condensed milk caramel = Mexican dulce de leche = swoon.

{5} Allyson noted that you pretty much have to include macarons, and they felt that Sugar & Plumm has the best in Manhattan.

They have some inventive flavors – strawberry poppyseed, violet blackcurrant, chocolate-covered banana! – and are made in New Jersey so they don’t suffer from a long shipping time from France.

I very much enjoyed the salted caramel and Adam, who “hates” macarons, went back for seconds of the pistachio!

{6} Finally, we ended at Sweet Revenge for chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes.  They are known for their cupcake and wine or beer pairings so we had the option of paying extra for the recommended Malbec or Hefeweizen, but everyone on our tour opted to take their cupcake to go.

So, six; apparently six desserts is overkill 😉

Please note – Sugartooth Tours brought Adam and I on the tour free of charge so we could see what it was all about.  I was not provided with further compensation for this post.  All opinions are my own.