Quick Take
A viral fruit-shaped mousse dessert at a Soquel bakery has drawn long lines and daily sellouts, with hundreds of pastries gone within hours as customers flock from across the region. The surge in demand is pushing owner Ela Crawford to shift focus from wholesale to her storefront, even as the labor-intensive treats limit how many she can produce.
A viral dessert at a bakery in Soquel inspired nearly dozens of eager patrons to line up around the block in the hopes of buying – and posting about – the colorful treats.
The appetite for these fruit-shaped mousse cakes with a crunchy chocolate shell inspired people to come to Sugar Bakery from as far away as Monterey, Hollister and Gilroy. On Tuesday, baker Ela Crawford sold all 150 within an hour of opening her shop on 41st Avenue, and 250 the following day.
“I was shocked,” said Crawford. Before launching her own version, she had watched the popular pastries sell out at bakeries in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, but witnessing the enthusiasm at her own bakery was still a surprise.
The trompe-l’oeils – French for “deceive the eye” – are molded and painted to resemble real fruits and nuts such as strawberries, passionfruit, bananas, hazelnuts and raspberries, and filled with flavored mousse and fresh fruit, chocolate or crumbled cookie. The lifelike desserts were catapulted into social media superstardom by French pastry chef Cédric Grolet, who inspired bakeries throughout the U.S. to emulate his edible works of art.
Sugar Bakery’s versions stand out for their fresh flavors and natural ingredients, said Crawford, who uses real fruit, Belgian chocolate and cream, without artificial sweeteners. “When you bite into the mango, there are chunks of mango. You can taste whatever it looks like,” she said. “People are crazy about the crunch and the soft interior.”
The cartoonish treats are simultaneously mouth-watering and almost too beautiful to eat. The vividly colored chocolate shell gives a satisfying crack before your teeth sink into airy mousse flavored like peanut butter, coffee or coconut. Depending on the design, the center might be filled with chocolate, crumbled cookie or jam. Each piece costs $9 to $11.
Despite the desserts’ popularity online, Crawford was reluctant to create her own. The delicate treats can be sold only through her storefront, and she wanted to focus solely on Sugar Bakery’s wholesale clients.
Crawford, a self-taught baker, opened Sugar Bakery in 2020 with a focus on French macarons, cheesecakes and thick stuffed cookies. As the business grew, she moved from a kiosk at the Capitola Mall into a 1,700-square-foot storefront and production center at the corner of 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive in December 2024.
In 2025, Crawford invested in updated equipment to automate repetitive tasks such as piping macaron shells and rolling cookie dough, and to sustain production for her major wholesale clients at New Leaf Community Markets, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. At the beginning of the year, her plan was to seek new wholesale partnerships and limit direct purchases through the front of the shop. Larger clients meant more consistency and less stress, Crawford said.
But a fellow baker’s experience in Seattle made her reconsider. Crawford immigrated to Santa Cruz from Ukraine in 2016, and as her own business grew, she began consulting with other Ukrainian immigrants on how to open and run bakeries in the U.S. One client in Seattle began making the trompe-l’oeils, and reported that they sold out every day.
In early April, Crawford promoted the release of her version of the pastries to Sugar Bakery’s 247,000 followers on Instagram and audience of 44,000 on TikTok, where a video of her husband and baby crunching into a mango-shaped dessert earned nearly a million views. The online enthusiasm translated to real sales when the products launched on April 28.
The enthusiastic reception has led Crawford to reconsider pulling focus from the storefront, and to invest her energy in a product that is both time-consuming and labor-intensive – the opposite of her mechanized wholesale items. The pastries take three days to make, and can be sold only through the storefront. Additional molds didn’t arrive on time last week, so Crawford and her team can make only 250 each day until the equipment arrives.
When the materials arrive, Crawford said she can make up to 1,000 pieces a day. It’s unclear at this point what will be greater: Sugar Bakery’s supply of the viral sweets, or her customers’ hunger for them.
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FOR THE RECORD: The story was updated to clarify that Sugar Bakery is in Soquel.
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