Greater than 115 million individuals watched a video of French pastry chef Cédric Grolet make fruit pies that resemble big blueberries, peaches, oranges and raspberries. A peach dessert molded and spray-painted to appear to be an actual peach drew 63.6 million views. Caramelized banana and peanut butter logs clumped collectively to imitate a bunch of bananas captivated almost 33 million individuals.
Grolet is thought for his trompe-l’œil desserts, elaborate creations constructed from varied fruit, nut brittles, mousse, cake, lotions, custards and sweets. He’s created desserts that appear to be oversize peanuts, Buddha’s arms and nearly each different nut, stone fruit and berry. I’ve spent hours on TikTok, mesmerized by these edible artistic endeavors.
“These types of desserts have been around for a while, but Cedric would be the one who started the trend and brought these kinds of desserts into popularity,” says Catherine Zhang, chef and associate at Tu Cha boba and dessert store in Koreatown.
Due to Zhang, and a handful of different cooks in Los Angeles, the trompe-l’œil fruit and nut-shaped desserts have made their means west.
Tu Cha
Zhang and her companions opened Tu Cha in March with a brief menu of fruit-shaped desserts and what she calls “dream cakes.” The most well-liked is the My Man Go ($14.50), made with contemporary mango encased in crème fraîche mango mousse with hazelnut praline in a tropical chocolate shell made to appear to be an actual mango. While you crack into the chocolate, the mousse is easy and virtually jellylike with a middle that tastes such as you’re biting right into a ripe mango.
The Berry3 ($14.50), pronounced “berry cube,” is introduced like a cube-shaped raspberry. It’s a placing purple dessert lined in crimson velvet spray that provides the floor the textured, virtually furry look of an actual raspberry. Inside, there’s a core of pistachio praline with each raspberry mousse and strawberry coulis.
A mango dessert from Tu Cha in Koreatown.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions )
“It’s pretty crazy how popular these desserts have been with the help of social media,” Zhang says. “We have food creators who have made it a trend to eat these desserts in your car. Those videos get millions of views and people come from that.”
A small staff of cooks works across the clock to supply about 1,000 desserts a day, but it surely’s by no means sufficient. Tu Cha sells out of each cake, day by day.
“I don’t think people understand the complexity behind the desserts and how long it takes to create each one,” Zhang says. “We are capped at the number we can produce each day because of our freezer space and the number of molds.”
Every dessert takes three days to make. The assorted parts are all made by hand, layered, chilled, molded, chilled once more, dipped and sprayed.
Then there’s the Dubai Pistachio ($22). It’s a heart-shaped cake embedded in a black tin, layered with matcha sponge cake, pistachio knafeh, matcha mousse and matcha white chocolate. You utilize a spoon to crack the matcha white chocolate, then navigate by way of the numerous layers to the underside of the tin. The matcha taste is intense, bitter and grassy, tempered by the candy chocolate and crunchy, nutty knafeh.
“After we launched, these desserts have become massive,” she says. “I feel like it’s everywhere now. Everyone has picked it up. Every dessert shop is trying its own version.”
Altadena Bakery
The Grigoryan household has been making a wide selection of Armenian pastries at their Burbank bakery since 2014. Proprietor Artwork Grigoryan began experimenting with fruit-shaped mousse desserts. Now, the bakery produces half a dozen varieties that resemble pears, purple and inexperienced apples, oranges, raspberries and mangoes.
The core of every dessert is a fruit filling, with contemporary diced mangoes in juice that oozes from the middle and a wallop of candy and bitter citrus within the orange.
The apple filling conjures photographs of cinnamon-spiked apple pie. All of the fillings are sheathed in silky mousse with an outer layer of Belgian chocolate.
“We’re planning on bringing back pistachio, coconut, avocado and lemon soon,” says Artwork’s son David Grigoryan.
At $10 every, they’re probably the most reasonably priced of all of the trompe-l’œil desserts we tried.
Aurora 
Desserts being ready at Aurora in Los Angeles.
(Mr. Mirco Magliocca)
When Kay Kara opened Aurora on South La Brea Avenue within the fall of 2023, the glass case that traces the shop was full of basic French desserts and sweets. His government pastry chef and grasp chocolatier, Nour Ramlawi, was skilled in Switzerland and spent years as a pastry chef in Dubai.
Kara and Ramlawi first launched a lemon-shaped confection in March 2024, and it rapidly turned one of many store’s high sellers.
“We are pretty much following an international trend that started in France, and we thought we could do something similar for L.A.,” Kara says. “The city was being underserved and the choices were not as novel as what was going on in Europe.”
Kara tasked Ramlawi with reworking an present mango dessert right into a mango-shaped creation known as Mango Insanity ($15). It’s a sunset-colored orb with a crunchy white chocolate shell, mousse and a contemporary mango middle.
A choice of fruit desserts from Aurora in Fairfax.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions )
“When we saw the trend of the fruit-shaped desserts was catching, we thought maybe we should follow the theme and we changed the shape,” Kara says. “I needed to have something that was Instagrammable, and eventually people caught up with what we were doing and it became viral,” he says. “It’s been going viral for over a year now.”
Ramlawi introduces a brand new fruit dessert each couple of months. Not too long ago, there was a Meyer lemon-filled Lemon County ($12) and a banana-shaped Musa ($15) constructed with layers of double chocolate and Speculoos, banana coulis, caramel and chocolate fondant spongecake.
The Orangiumum ($25) and Rose Razzleberry ($25) are large approximations of the fruits they’re meant to resemble. A cross-section of the orange boasts eight totally different preparations of orange and a number of days of meeting. There’s orange cake, a crispy crepe, orange rind, mousse and coulis. Close to the middle is a spherical of rice pudding and the whole factor is dipped in white chocolate that’s adorned to appear to be a sun-kissed orange. An precise leaf (I realized this the exhausting means) protrudes from the highest.
The Rose Razzleberry is simply as elaborate, with a base of chocolate cake, Pop Rocks sweet, Champagne mousse, chocolate mousse and raspberry coulis.
“I think it’s time for L.A. to evolve beyond the doughnut and the cupcake,” Kara says. “The city deserves more.”
Cool Bites Pâtisserie
Anita Aykazyan says the La Pistache is “the best dessert” within the pastry case on the Glendale store. The dessert mirrors an unshelled pistachio, with stunning striations of inexperienced and brown and an uneven floor lined in sensible grooves.
“This is actually his,” she says. “I took classes with Grolet and was inspired by his work.”
A pistachio dessert from Cool Bites Pâtisserie in Glendale.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Occasions)
The La Pistache ($18) is a three-day course of that entails a pistachio cream crunchy with pistachio praline, pistachio ganache and white chocolate. Every one is molded and adorned by hand.
Earlier than La Pistache, there was the Raspberry Petit Gateau, a dessert initially supplied when the store opened in April 2024. It underwent a collection of transformations, together with a heart-shaped design, earlier than Aykazyan discovered a raspberry mildew.
“When we started a year and a half ago with the raspberry dessert, there were not a lot of places doing them,” she says. “Some places were making lemon or orange but no raspberries.”
Aykazyan solely provides the raspberry in the course of the summer season, and makes an effort to maintain her dessert case as seasonal as doable. The petite gateau would be the most lifelike of all of them, with a deep purple colour and a furry velvet exterior. Inside is a light-weight, luscious mousse she realized to make whereas learning below Ksenia Penkina, a Russian baker primarily based in Vancouver, Canada. And within the very middle, an entire raspberry.
“We’re a little behind Europe, but right now, this is a trend in L.A. because they look realistic,” Aykazyan says. “I also think it’s because they are fun and really yummy.”
To see our favorites, watch a full style take a look at of all of the desserts talked about above in our video right here, or on YouTube.
The place to search out Trompe-l’œil desserts in Los Angeles
Tu Cha, 2968 W. seventh St., Los Angeles, (213) 232-3838, www.tu-cha.comCool Bites Pâtisserie, 932 N. Model Blvd., Glendale, (424) 877-2233, coolbitescatering.com Aurora, 211 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 747-1333, aurora-la.com/aurora-laAltadena Bakery, 2801 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank, (818) 588-3078, altadenabakery.com
