No meal is complete without dessert. At Off the Grid, dessert isn’t an afterthought but rather a unique experience made with love by creators experimenting with flavors and pushing classical dessert to new limits. Check out the list of some of our favorite ice creams and pastries from across the bay!
Our Favorite Dessert Trucks at Off the Grid
Marley’s Treats is a Bay Area bakery famous for their mastery of ube. Try ube in the form of a cupcake, ice cream cone, or milkshake. You can even find bright purple ube cinnamon rolls and flan. They experiment with more than just sweets. For example, they collaborated on a chopped cheese sandwich where they made ube french rolls drizzled with ube sauce. Check out our Marley’s Treats creator feature here.
Humphrey Slocombe is a popular ice cream shop that focuses on unique flavor combinations. Our favorite is the “secret breakfast” — bourbon ice cream with cornflake cookies folded in. For a hit of caffeine, get a scoop of the Vietnamese coffee made with condensed milk and chicory. The matchadoodle uses green tea from Kyoto and housemade snickerdoodle cookies.
Cookies n Cream serves up the sweetest sandwich on this list. Mix and match cookies and ice cream flavors to make your own unique creation. They’re set apart from other ice cream sandwich vendors due to the high-quality of their ice cream. Their macapuno is made with real shredded baby coconut and the blackberry is made with fruit imported from Oregon.
Daisy’s Desserts is easy to spot thanks to the glow of their neon lights. This one stop shop dessert truck serves everything from cookies to creme brulee to mangonadas. Our favorites are their freshly fried mini donuts coated in cinnamon sugar.
Churros Mexicanos specializes in Mexican churros dusted in cinnamon sugar. They have four filling options — strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, and cajeta. Our favorite is strawberry as it adds a necessary tartness and freshness to balance the sweetness.
FK Frozen Custard serves up popsicles made of frozen custard. What really sets their pops apart is their commitment to high quality ingredients. Their Thai Tea bar is made with tea leaves imported from Thailand; while, their chocolate bar is made with Guittard chocolate made in Burlingame. Keep an eye out for their specialty bars featuring smores, whole cookies, and strawberry shortcake.
43 and Co. makes a large collection of artisan desserts including banana cream pie, chocolate cake, fruit tarts, and hazelnut cream pie. They’re great for catering events because they offer all their flavors in small portions like mini pies, cupcakes, or cut cake slices which are ready to serve.
Jolly’s Teas Cream combines tea and ice cream into one irresistible scoop. Flavors include black sugar bubble milk tea, lapsang suchong, early grey, orange cardamom chai, and strawberry hibiscus.
Johnny Doughnuts serves up classic donuts inspired by recipes from the 1920’s. Their raised doughnut uses fresh potatoes and is topped with glazes like chocolate, strawberry, cinnamon sugar, and lime poppy. They also offer a vegan version made with roasted sweet potatoes.
Luv’s Brownies is home of the original heart-shaped brownie and has been spreading love in the form of chocolate since 1996. You can try the original brownie with chocolate drizzle and sprinkles or try it in one of their many unique creations. You can get it on a stick, as a smore, in a sundae, as a sandwich, or served over a coffee.
Our Favorite Desserts Across the Bay Area
Garden Creamery (San Francisco) scoops unique flavors near Mission. Their business started as a food truck that would often post up at Off the Grid events. Even their vanilla, which is often considered a simple flavor, is made with Pure Tahitian vanilla beans. The genmaicha is made with matcha and toasted rice; while, the Bangkok Thai is made with peanut toasted coconut, cayenne, and UME salted plum sweet cream.
Cotogna’s gelato cart is only open on Fridays from 12 to 4PM, but it’s worth carving out time in your day to kick start the weekend. We love their tiramisu, apricot, and lemon and lemon flavors. While times are limited, they’re planning to open a gelateria in 2025.
Dandelion Chocolate (San Francisco) is a store for chocolate connoisseurs. You’ll find high-quality chocolate bars and hot chocolate mixes, but the reason to pay them a visit is their small bites, drinks, and confections. You can order a gateau basque (a hybrid between a cookie, tart, and pie) made with cacao fruit. They also offer candied Japanese fruit covered in chocolate and treats like black sesame toffee brittle and chocolate hazelnut spread.
Modo Hawaii (Santa Clara) is the Bay Area’s original mochi donut. Their green tea donut is made with imported matcha and mixed with Belgian white chocolate. The Lilikoi donut is a Hawaiian classic with the sweet and tart flavors of passion fruit. They always have fun seasonal flavors on rotation — for the fall, you can stop by for an ube mochi, tiramisu, pumpkin spice, or salted caramel donuts.
Paleta Planeta (San Jose) takes the Mexican paleta to the next level by making a majority of their ingredients from scratch. Their flavors change every week and are inspired by the flavors of desserts from around the world. If you’re a fan of orange dreamsicles, try their take on it — a shattery mango-passion fruit shell filled with lechera. We also love their strawberry cheesecake paleta made with strawberry jam, cream cheese, and graham crackers.
Mitchell’s (San Francisco) is an ice cream shop that opened in 1953 and offers a rotating selection of tropical and traditional flavors. Their flavors include avocado, cantaloupe, macapuno, lychee, pistachio, and kahlua. They also offer sorbet flavors such as coconut, kalamansi, and passion fruit.
Looking to cater a sweet treat this Halloween season? Whether you’re looking for ice cream, cookies, or donuts, we’ve got you covered. Visit our catering page to get started.
