Bakery in Winter Park Area

Order through side takeout window.

The best part about the holiday season is that it's a perfectly justifiable excuse for stuffing yourself silly -- with the "New Year's resolution" ploy as a handy fallback.

So add George's Gourmet Cookies to your personal shopping list. The shop at 947 Orange Ave. in Winter Park complements the online store, www.georgesgourmetcookies.com, but both are dangerously tempting. Each cookie is about the size of a saucer, too thick to jam whole in your mouth unless you're very gifted, and loaded with things like dark gourmet chocolate, fresh-roasted peanuts, sweet cranberries, whole cherries and real butter.

So add George's Gourmet Cookies to your personal shopping list. The shop at 947 Orange Ave. in Winter Park complements the online store, www.georgesgourmetcookies.com, but both are dangerously tempting. Each cookie is about the size of a saucer, too thick to jam whole in your mouth unless you're very gifted, and loaded with things like dark gourmet chocolate, fresh-roasted peanuts, sweet cranberries, whole cherries and real butter.

George's has been making more than a dozen kinds of decadent cookies as well as ultrathick brownies and dessert bars (mmm, chocolate butterscotch) since 1989. He also offers sandwiches and soups at the shop, and drool-inducing gift baskets. Yeah, like any of it will leave your house.

If you see "Hot doughnuts now" in red neon at the new Krispy Kreme, in Winter Park, there's only one thing to do: Get out of traffic and into the drive-through lane as soon as possible, because a fresh batch of doughnuts is rolling off the assembly line.

It would be hard to estimate how many customers have pulled illegal U-turns and other funky driving maneuvers to get to the shop, which opened April 20. But a manager did say that they've had no problems with surplus inventory, even when production is cranked up full blast to 270 dozen doughnuts per hour. Choose from about 17 different kinds -- powdered blueberry, chocolate cream, glazed devil food, sour-cream cake -- but the original glazed remains by far the most popular, at 59 cents a pop. Adding to temptation, the drive-through is open until midnight.

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.