In life, it’s only natural to want to reward yourself between toils — during those quiet moments shuttling between work and school, battling highway traffic between Shields and Olive Avenues, say. Life’s too short not to indulge in the occasional guilty pleasure.
Little treats are designed for exactly those moments, the kinds of caloric self-care you don’t need to share with anyone. Your treat, on your time, at your pace. There’s no wrong way to treat yourself — anything small and personal that feels like a reward can qualify.
‘Little Treat Culture‘ emerged several years ago, based on online trends, but the general concept is fairly straightforward, and probably timeless: a spontaneous self-remuneration for enduring routine challenges.
With that in mind, we polled the Fresnoland staff for some of our favorite sweet treats around town — the ones reserved for those days when we felt like we’d truly earned ourselves a quiet reverie. The only rule for this list? Choose anything that can satisfy a sweet tooth and be enjoyed all to yourself.
Cherry Snowcone at The Ice Cream Shop
In a place like Fresno, the sweltering heat and gleaming sun tend to make any frozen treat that much more cooling and satisfying. That’s why places like The Ice Cream Shop on Fowler Avenue stick out like an icicle.
Inside, you’re immediately greeted by a cacophony of colors from their selection of gelatos, waffle cones, slushies and toppings. It’s the snow cones in particular, however, that have the power to freeze any summer day woes.
For just $5, you can get a small snow cone in your choice of 11 flavors. For only $2 more, you can get a large snow cone to really chill out. Either way, biting into a densely packed snowball, seeping with sweet, tangy cherry flavor is exactly the remedy I need after a long day out in the Central Valley sun.
Summer may just be about over, but it’s never too late to treat yourself to a snow cone!
— Diego Vargas, education equity reporter
Honeycomb Pastry at Mokha Harbor Cafe (formerly Bab-Al-Yemen)
It was raining in Fresno — probably for the first time since I’d moved here from Michigan in March 2022, survived my first summer and started panicking that I might never see precipitation again. My friend Melissa invited me and our other reporter friends some weekend to one of her favorite coffee shops around town, known at the time as Bab-Al-Yemen (now called Mokha Harbor Cafe after a management change).
We ordered enough pastries and tea to last at least an hour’s worth of gossip — about the politicians and coworkers giving us the most trouble that week — but I instantly fell in love with the place. The low-slung seats, arranged in quartets; its gentle lighting, perfect for long conversations; it was also when I first fell in love with the honeycomb pastry.
“Honeycomb” is the loose translation of the pastry’s Arabic name, khaliat al nahl. Mokha Harbor’s rendition comes as a generous, pizza-slice-sized wedge of pull-apart buns, filled with cream cheese, sprinkled with sesame seeds and drizzled with honey. That rainy day was the perfect introduction, but I’ve since found that the honeycomb is for all seasons.
So is the cafe, where I’ve shared the honeycomb with the loved ones who have visited me through the years: my best friend Sam, my late mother. Go share one with your mom, your best friend, and catch up on all the gossip.
— Julianna Morano, labor and economy reporter
Lychee Delight with Boba at 15 Tea
There’s something delightful about a post-meal treat that doesn’t hose you down with sugar. Not that sweeter deserts are bad, it’s just nice to have something a little more subtle. That’s what I’m looking for when I get the Lychee Delight at 15 Tea, one of several signature drinks you can buy at the small boba cafe across the street from the River Park shopping center.
Boba is boba, you sort of know what to expect there. But the first time I ordered the Lychee Delight, I was shocked to find that the drink included five lychees, chia seeds and a mint leaf or two. It’s truly one of the most refreshing fruit teas you’ll ever have, so good you might tell your mom about it — maybe even your dad. My parents are now unanimous that this is best boba they’ve ever had, thanks to my recommendation. It’s the lychees that make it.
Where else can you get boba and a couple lychees on a weekday night? I’ve yet to find something that tops it. And on the off chance it’s not enough to satisfy you, 15 Tea has some snack options too, alongside a long list of milk teas, slushies and smoothies.
The Lychee Delight runs you just under $7. Ask for boba too and it’ll be 7.65 pre-tax.
— Omar S. Rashad, former investigative reporter and assistant editor
Iced Matcha at Cafe Van Ness at Gazebo Gardens
In high school, I spent many summer evenings at Gazebo Gardens with a group of friends, listening to local bands, deciding between tacos, pizza, or ice cream and wandering through the nursery. Those nights gave me an appreciation for Fresno at a time when I was still trying to find my place in an unfamiliar city.
What I never realized was that Cafe Van Ness, tucked beside the gift shop, had opened in 2015—the very same year I started spending so much time there. It feels ridiculous that it took me more than a decade to finally step inside (to be fair, I wasn’t much of a coffee or matcha person back then).
After a yoga class one Sunday, I stopped in for the first time and ordered an iced matcha. The barista asked whether I wanted it sweetened or unsweetened — something I’d never been asked before, even as a native Californian matcha consumer. Even as a certified matcha-file, the Cafe Van Ness version immediately shot to the top of my list in Fresno.
The cafe is also known for its hand-crafted coffee drinks inspired by Fresno neighborhoods. There’s the Cornell Ave, made with white chocolate and coconut, and the Simpson Ave, featuring Aztec chocolate and blood orange, along with several other locally inspired creations.
Drink in hand, I wandered through the nursery for the first time in nearly a decade. I caught glimpses of the younger version of myself who found comfort and community in that space.
I definitely recommend stopping by any day of the week. They’re open daily from 7 am to 2 pm. Do yourself a favor and order the sweetened version of your drink.
— Gisselle Medina, religion and culture reporter
Mochinut Donut at Mochinut
I used to do a lot of work out of Collect Coffee Bar on Campus Pointe, which has some of Fresno’s best coffee but almost zero comfortable seating. That’s a story for another time, but suffice it to say, when Mochinut opened a few doors down in 2022, I was intrigued.
Apparently a national chain “with over 180 locations across the US,” they specialize in mochi donuts – donuts made from mochi batter, usually a combination of glutinous rice and/or tapioca flour – along with Korean corndogs and sweet drinks, like smoothies and boba.
The donuts immediately drew my eye. Every day they lay them out in a vibrant display, in rows of five or six different varieties, featuring various colorful glazes, dustings, crumbles and toppings. As a member of Gen Z might say, “Low key? They’re works of art.”
I’m generally not a huge sweets person but every once in a while a donut hits just right. Cupcakes seem silly (I lived through NYC’s artisan cupcake trend in the late aughts, oy) but donuts seem to focus on everything I seek out in a sweet treat – fried exteriors and gooey dough, preferably with a minimum of fruit and frosting.
I love a traditional donut, but Mochinut donuts have a few added benefits. For one thing, the rice flour dough feels somehow lighter, vaguely healthier-seeming than regular donuts, and the place lacks that funky fryer oil smell that donut places can sometimes have (which does inexorably draw me to it like Yogi Bear smelling a picnic basket when it’s late and I’ve been drinking). The mochi dough also has a nice chewiness to it and seems to maintain its freshness longer. I find it gooier, spongier, and slightly less greasy than a “regular” donut.
Mochinut donuts also have a unique shape: rings made of interconnected spheres. This both makes them easily shareable, with little balls that you can break off individually, and also allows for the ideal kind of sweet treat self-delusion. You can go in with the pretense that you’re only going to have a couple spheres, that you’re going to take the rest home to share or save for later. I know from experience that this will never happen, but these are the kinds of white lies I like to tell myself to get me in the door.
My favorite varieties are the ones with crunchy stuff or powder on them (I hate frosting), but I’ve also never had a bad one.
My biggest criticism is Mochinut’s hours: 11 am to 8 pm, every day (9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays). Objectively, 11 am is an absurdly late hour for a donut shop to open. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the area thinking about how good a donut would sound right then, only to devastatedly realize it was only 10 am at the time.
Paradoxically, that also makes Mochinut donuts a perfect “little treat.” It’s rare that I’ll just be happening by and craving a donut during their business hours, so it either has to be an unusual day or I have to seek them out in true “treat yo self” fashion. That novelty, that exclusivity, much as it pains me to say it, probably makes them taste better.
— Vince Mancini, contributing food editor
Chocolate Soft Serve at Fosters’ Freeze
When I was a kid, I hated ice cream. It was too cold. It was too hard. I was a textbook neurodivergent child with texture challenges. One of my dad’s best hot tips in life has been to microwave your ice cream, which I still do to this day.
So when I moved to upstate New York, I was floored at the mere existence of ‘soft serve culture.’ All you who have lived in the northeast know what I’m talking about. You can barely drive a few miles down a backcountry road in New York, Connecticut, or Massachusetts without seeing a soft serve stand. When I lived in New York City, Mr. Softee was ubiquitous. My personal favorite was Not My Dad’s Ice Cream, in Trumansburg, NY. (It now has a new name, I’m told.)
Soft serve is the perfect sweet treat for all occasions. It’s light. It’s creamy. You don’t feel heavy afterwards. Sprinkles provide whimsy. And it doesn’t break the bank.
So after moving back to California, I had to find a new soft serve spot, and Fosters’ Freeze has definitely hit. I was first lured in by the old location in Fig Garden (RIP) offering $1 small cones on Wednesdays. As a parent, there are few things more exciting than cheap meals that can liven up a 110-degree day. My kids have discovered boba and let’s just say I’d rather not break the bank for a special treat, since our sugar-crazed household wants one more often than not.
Inflation gets us all, so these days, a small cone on Wednesdays now sets you back $1.49. (Sprinkles are $.50 extra.) I’ll still gladly sit in the drive-thru line on Cedar and Shields after soccer practice for that.
– Danielle Bergstrom, editor-in-chief and executive director
