Rose-jam pączki are a starting point at A. Blikle, the Warsaw confectioner trading on Nowy Świat since 1869. Kanazawa's Ame no Tawaraya works with a different sweet foundation, making jiro-ame malt syrup through a business established in 1830. In Nagoya, Aoyagi Souhonke makes uirō rice cakes alongside its frog-shaped Kaeru Manjū sweets. The Nagoya house began in 1879, placing those two forms within a confectionery business with nineteenth-century roots.
A. Blikle has stood on Nowy Świat in central Warsaw since 1869, when confectioner Antoni Blikle opened the shop that still carries his name. It is best known for pączki, its rose-jam doughnut sold by the thousands each Fat Thursday.
Best for The 1869 Warsaw house whose rose-jam pączki set the standard for Polish carnival doughnuts.
A. Blikle has stood on Nowy Świat in central Warsaw since 1869, when confectioner Antoni Blikle opened the shop that would carry his family's name through more than 155 years of Polish history. The house's own account describes it as a symbol of quality and tradition, built on multi-generational experience, and the confectionery has passed through the hands of Blikle's successors across two world wars, communist-era disruption, and the uncertain years of transition that followed — a continuity few Warsaw institutions of any kind can claim.
Blikle's defining product is its pączki, the yeast-raised, rose-jam-filled doughnut that has become the standard against which Polish bakeries elsewhere measure their own. On Tłusty Czwartek, the Fat Thursday that opens Poland's pre-Lenten carnival season, the house reportedly sells some 15,000 of them in a single day — a scale of demand built on more than a century of continuous production rather than seasonal novelty. Alongside the pączki, the shop makes refined tortes, macarons, and other artisanal cakes, all described by the house as deeply rooted in Polish confectionery tradition.
The shop's back room has its own layer of history: Poland's first prime minister, Ignacy Paderewski, is said to have played piano there as a young man, and both pianist Arthur Rubinstein and actor Marcel Marceau were known to stop in on visits to Warsaw. Blikle's 1869 founding and its Nowy Świat address anchor the house in Polish bread-and-pastry heritage.
A historic Kanazawa confectioner specializing in jiro-ame malt syrup. Founded in 1830; its traditional syrup is a Kanazawa specialty.
Best for Jiro-ame malt syrup, a Kanazawa specialty made since 1830
Ame no Tawaraya has made jiro-ame -- a thick, amber malt syrup boiled down from rice and barley -- in Kanazawa's Kobashi-machi district since 1830, making it one of the city's oldest continuously operating confectioners. According to the shop's own account, the syrup was first developed after its founder saw local mothers unable to produce enough milk to nurse their infants; jiro-ame, naturally sweet and nutrient-dense, was formulated as a substitute food for newborns, and for generations afterward it was given to nursing mothers, pregnant women and the convalescent to help them regain strength, a use documented by the Ishikawa Prefecture Food Association among the region's traditional foodstuffs. The syrup itself, made without refined sugar, can be eaten directly off a spoon or folded into savory cooking as a natural sweetener for vegetables, fish and meat. The shop expanded the same base ingredient into two further forms: Amenko, soft kneaded granules, and Tawarakko, made by reducing jiro-ame further until it hardens into an easy-to-lick candy sold as Kanazawa's signature souvenir sweet, marketed under the name Okoshi Ame. Now run by president Hideaki Tawara, the shop continues to work from its original Kobashi-machi address, nearly two centuries after it began making syrup for babies who could not otherwise be fed.
Founded in 1879, Aoyagi Souhonke is the Nagoya maker behind the city's famous Aoyagi uiro rice cakes and the frog-shaped Kaeru Manju. Its sweets are sold at the Osu flagship and other Nagoya shops as well as an online store, with cafe treats at the KITTE Nagoya branch.
Best for Aoyagi uiro rice cakes and frog-shaped Kaeru Manju since 1879
Jean Arnaud and Marguerite Soubeyran founded the house in 1837 — originally to raise dowries for their three daughters — and four generations on it remains Montélimar's longest-serving nougat manufacturer. At the factory's Musée du Nougat, visitors watch confectioners make the honey-and-almond nougat sold in the shop.
Best for Honey-and-almond Montélimar nougat straight from the factory
Bäcker Krimphove has baked in Münster since 1860 and remains a family business in its sixth generation, running both its traditional Krimphove bakery and a French-style Pain et Gâteau boulangerie-patisserie line. Some 300 staff supply more than 22 branches across the city, including a dedicated gluten-free line from its Wolbeck facility.
Best for Sixth-generation Münster bakery pairing Westphalian and French bread lines
Bäcker Krimphove has baked in Münster since 1860, and the business remains family-run through its sixth generation, a lineage that spans more than 160 years in the same city. Today around 300 staff supply more than 22 locations across Münster from a central production facility on Loddenheide.
The bakery runs two distinct concepts side by side: the original Krimphove bakery, focused on traditional bread, pastry and confectionery, and Pain et Gâteau, a French-style boulangerie-pâtisserie line developed as a separate brand within the same company. A dedicated gluten-free production line, based at a facility in Wolbeck, extends the range to customers who cannot eat the standard bread, alongside vegetarian and vegan options.
Beyond retail, Krimphove caters events and offers meeting space at select branches, with daily lunch menus rotating across its stores, a scale of operation that has made it one of the larger family bakery businesses in the region while still describing itself around inherited recipes and regional sourcing.
Founded by Alois Brandl in 1891 and passed to fourth-generation baker Franz Brandl in 1998, this Linz bakery opened Austria's first glass-walled display bakery in 2006, letting customers watch rolls and pastries made by hand. It also keeps its own bees for Brandl honey.
Best for Austria's first glass-walled display bakery
Alois Brandl founded this bakery in Linz's Grünauerstraße on 14 August 1891. It passed down through the family for four generations, reaching Franz Brandl in 1998, and it has spent the years since expanding on that foundation rather than moving away from it.
In 2006, Franz Brandl opened what the bakery describes as Austria's first glass-walled display bakery, letting customers watch rolls and pastries made by hand from the shop floor. "We have nothing to hide," he has said of the decision, which won the business a Pegasus in Bronze business award that year and, in 2008, the Marktkieker — a recognition the bakery's own materials describe as the top honor in German-speaking baking.
Alongside its Semmerln rolls and poppy-seed Flesserln pastries, the bakery keeps its own bees for Brandl Honig and runs baking sessions billed as "Backen mit Kindern." More than 130 years after Alois Brandl's founding, the business still frames its identity around watching bread get made, not just eating it.
Founded in 1886 by master baker Anton Sieß and now in its fifth generation, this Ludwigstraße bakery and café makes bread, rolls, cakes, and fine pastries with long dough maturation. It keeps a traditional confectionery-café alongside the counter in central Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Balzer has run as a pasticceria in Bergamo's lower town since 1850 and holds the license to Polenta e Osèi, the marzipan-and-sponge cake shaped like a mound of polenta topped with little birds. It also makes the Donizetti Cake, a hazelnut-and-liqueur sweet named for the Bergamo-born composer Gaetano Donizetti.
Prato biscuit maker founded in 1858 by Antonio Mattei, credited with developing the original almond biscotti di Prato ('cantucci') recipe, awarded medals in Florence (1861), London (1862) and Paris (1867); still baked in Prato by the Pandolfini family, who took over the recipe in 1908.
Best for The original cantuccini.
Biscottificio Antonio Mattei was founded in 1858 in Prato, Tuscany, by Antonio Mattei, who is credited with developing the recipe for the almond biscuit now known across Italy as biscotti di Prato or cantuccini. The recipe won prizes at international exhibitions in Florence in 1861, London in 1862 and Paris in 1867, establishing the Prato bakery's reputation well beyond Tuscany within its first decade. The business has kept Mattei's name even though his direct family line did not continue it: the Pandolfini family took over the bakery in 1908 and has run it ever since, guarding the original recipe as a family secret while introducing additional Tuscan sweet specialties over the following century. The bakery still operates from the same historic building in central Prato that it has occupied since 1858. In 2018 the company opened a Bottega & Museum in Florence, extending its retail and storytelling presence beyond Prato and offering tastings alongside its traditional almond biscuits, torrone and other confections. In 2019 it trademarked a specific shade of blue — 'Blu Mattei' — as a distinctive packaging color unique to the company, formalizing more than 160 years of visual identity around its signature product.
Boudin Bakery has baked San Francisco Sourdough since the 1849 gold rush, making it the city's original sourdough bakery. Its flagship stands at Fisherman's Wharf.
Munich's grand café since 1888 runs a proper confiserie shop — house pralines, Baumkuchen and the Luitpold blends — from the salon where the city has taken its coffee for over a century.
Best for Pralines, Baumkuchen and classic Munich café confectionery
Café Luitpold opened on Brienner Strasse on 1 January 1888, part of a redevelopment of seven buildings between Brienner Strasse and Salvatorplatz undertaken between 1886 and 1888. Architect Otto Lasne built it around a large domed hall and a mirrored salon connected by a colonnaded passage, finished in bronze and black marble with ornamental wall paintings — a scale that let it rival Vienna's Café Central and Budapest's Café New York. It quickly became one of Munich's central gathering points for nobility, merchants, artists and ordinary citizens; Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee are reported to have founded the Blue Rider artist group there in 1911, and comedian Loriot was a regular in the 1960s, later writing an essay about the café's pralines. The building was 80 percent destroyed in 1944 and reopened in simplified form as a Palmengarten in 1948. Today's café and confiserie, renovated in 2010, sells house-made cakes, pastries, biscuits and pralines, and still runs the Luitpold coffee blends the address has served for over a century. A small first-floor museum displays photographs and documents from the building's history.
A Morelia confectioner making traditional Michoacan sweets since 1840, including ates, morelianas, cajeta and rompope, across five city shops and a Museo del Dulce. Its candies are sold at the branches and shipped across Mexico, with the online store briefly paused.
Best for Mexican-candy, ate, cajeta, dulces-morelianos
Isigny-sur-Mer, Normandy caramel maker using AOP-certified Isigny butter and cream in copper-pot cooking, continuing a regional confectionery tradition dating to Dupont d'Isigny's 1894 soft-caramel recipe; offers factory tours.
Best for Isigny AOP butter caramels from Normandy dairy country
Caramels d'Isigny is based in Isigny-sur-Mer, in Normandy's Calvados department, an area that has been a center of French butter and cream production since at least the 16th century. Confectionery production developed alongside the dairy trade: the soft caramel style now most associated with Isigny traces to 1894, when Pierre and Jean Dupont developed a caramel recipe that became known as 'Dupont d'Isigny.' The present-day Caramels d'Isigny company continues this tradition using AOP-certified Isigny butter and cream from the Isigny Sainte-Mere dairy cooperative, cooked in traditional copper basins, and offers factory tours where visitors can watch production.
Carstens began as a general confectionery in 1845 before turning exclusively to marzipan production by the early twentieth century, and in 1874 co-founder Charlotte Erasmi earned the title of supplier to the imperial court of Wilhelm I. The house keeps its almond paste content near 90 percent, well above cheaper commercial marzipan, so the almond flavor dominates rather than the sugar.
A former royal court confectioner founded in Dresden in 1825 and celebrated for its layered Baumkuchen baked to old family recipes. After wartime destruction the family later reopened at the Altmarkt, where pralines, tortes and Christstollen are still made by hand.
Confeitaria Nacional has operated from the same address on Praça da Figueira since 1829, its neoclassical facade and gilded, mirrored interior little changed since it became official supplier to the Portuguese royal house in 1873. The pastry shop brought the recipe for Bolo Rei to Portugal from France and still guards its version of the Christmas cake as a closely held secret.
A Seville institution since 1885, Confitería La Campana still bears the title "proveedor de la Real Casa" and mixes its pastries by hand over a 24-hour process at its landmark Calle Sierpes shop. Beyond retail sales, the confectionery also caters weddings and events.
Two master confectioners, Cron and Lanz, merged their workshops in 1876 to found this Viennese-style coffeehouse on Göttingen's Weender Strasse, known for house-made Baumkuchen, marzipan, pralines and tortes, with a second branch, Kleines Crönchen, in the Ostviertel.
Best for House-made Baumkuchen, marzipan, pralines and tortes, with a second branch, Kleines Crönchen
Cron & Lanz dates to 1876, when two master confectioners named Cron and Lanz merged their separate workshops into a single Viennese-style coffeehouse and pastry house on Weender Strasse, Göttingen's main pedestrian street - a partnership the business has carried in its name for close to a century and a half. The counter is built around Baumkuchen, the ringed layer cake associated with German confectionery tradition, alongside marzipan, pralines, tortes and tea biscuits, all made in house rather than bought in. A second, smaller branch, Kleines Crönchen, operates in the Ostviertel at Brüder-Grimm-Allee, extending the same kitchen's output beyond the flagship. The shop is regularly described as one of the most respected and traditional confectioneries in South Lower Saxony, a reputation built on continuity: the same combined name, the same city-center address, and the same core repertoire of hand-finished cakes and chocolates carried forward since the two founders joined forces. Beyond the café tables, Cron & Lanz runs an online shop with DHL home delivery and customer-chosen shipping dates, letting the Baumkuchen and boxed pralines travel well past Göttingen. It is, at heart, a 19th-century coffeehouse still running on its founding formula - fine confectionery made on site, served or boxed, in the same pedestrian-street storefront.
Budapest's most patisserie since 1858 — Esterházy cake, Gerbeaud slice (walnut and apricot jam), and coffee in a historic setting on Vörösmarty Square.
Best for Esterházy cake, Gerbeaud slice (walnut and apricot jam)
Jalan Macalister / George Town (retail on Beach Street & Penang Road)
Ghee Hiang has made pure sesame oil and traditional pastries in George Town since 1856, when a Fujian pastry chef settled in Penang. Its handmade tau sar pneah and beh teh saw, along with the Baby Brand sesame oil introduced in the early 1900s, remain the core of the counter.
Hafız Mustafa 1864 has sold Turkish baklava, kadayıf, puddings, lokum, dragees, cakes and other confectionery since 1864. The house operates branches across Istanbul and internationally, including its historic Sirkeci presence as well as Dubai and London, while its dedicated online shop extends the same sweets beyond the physical network for domestic and international orders without tying the description to a brittle branch count.
Best for Confectionery, baklava, turkish-delight, patisserie
Hans Egstorf has baked stroopwafels in Amsterdam since 1898, still using the original family recipe. The bakery serves them warm at multiple Amsterdam locations and ships them worldwide, with its online range extending to classic tins, boxes and Delft Blue pottery jars filled with stroopwafels and made for gifting.
Best for Stroopwafels baked to an 1898 original recipe
Hans Egstorf has baked stroopwafels — the thin, waffle-iron-pressed cookies filled with caramel syrup — at its Spuistraat address in Amsterdam since 1898, using what the bakery describes as its original recipe. The business markets itself as the standard-bearer for the stroopwafel and one of the city's oldest bakeries, a claim tied to its more than a century of continuous production at the same central Amsterdam location.
Beyond the classic loose waffle, the bakery packages its stroopwafels in tins, gift boxes and hand-painted Delft Blue pottery containers, aimed partly at visitors looking for a Dutch souvenir alongside the cookies. The bakery ships internationally via DHL Express, including to the US and UK.
Hans Egstorf carries a 4.8-star rating from more than 8,500 Google reviews, and continues to sell warm stroopwafels fresh from its original Amsterdam storefronts alongside its packaged retail line.
Founded in 1882, Hyakkaen is a wagashi and confectionery maker on Eishodori in central Niigata. It crafts seasonal Japanese sweets, including its caramel yokan and HIYORIKA line, sold in-store and through its online shop.
Founded in 1887 in the Uzun Çarşı below the citadel, this fourth-generation Gaziantep house is known for its pistachio baklava and kebabs. It ships baklava nationally while still serving from its original Kale Altı address.
Established in 1830, this Nagasaki confectioner near Meganebashi bridge is known for moshiho-gusa mochi, kangiku dried sweets and made-to-order Nagasaki castella. The Suwa-machi shop also sells seasonal specialties such as zabon-zuke candied citron and festival sweets for the Boys' and Girls' Dayseasons.
Founded in 1864 in the Nakatsugawa post town, this confectioner is credited with originating kuri kinton and works chestnuts into seasonal wagashi, steamed yokan, and monaka. Sweets are sold at its main shop and Magome branch and shipped through its online store.
Honmachi, Bikan Historical Quarter, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan
Kikkodo is the Honmachi confectioner credited with inventing murasuzume, the folded sparrow-shaped castella-and-red-bean sweet, in 1877 after Kurashiki's mayor named the confection. The shop still sells murasuzume alongside its baumkuchen and offers hands-on baking sessions from the same Bikan-quarter storefront.
Best for Murasuzume, Kurashiki's signature confection
Piazza Soziglia / Piazza Matteotti, centro storico
The Swiss-origin Klainguti family opened this pastry shop in 1828, and it still makes Genoese specialties such as the Falstaff brioche, Portantur zabaione pastries, Gobelletti jam tarts and the Torta Zena. The historic Piazza Soziglia premises were restored and reopened after a recent renovation.
Kobe Fugetsudo has made its layered Gaufre wafer sandwich on Motomachi-dori since 1897, marking its 120th anniversary in 2017. The Chuo-ku honten still bakes and sells the confection that remains the company's defining product after more than a century.
A Bremen confectionery run by the Knigge family since 1889 and now in its fourth generation, known for Baumkuchen and classic German cakes and pastries. It sells its baked goods online and through its Sögestraße café.
A patisserie on Gmunden's Franz-Josef-Platz baking since 1878 and once a supplier to European nobility, now led by master pastry chef Sebastian Brenner. Cases hold hand-rolled pralines, Cremeschnitte and Kardinalschnitte alongside homemade ice cream.
Best for Classic Austrian pastries, pralines and ice cream
Koshiyama Kanseido has made handmade Kanazawa wagashi since 1888, including Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored Edo-period wedding confection, and kikatou sugar sweets for Hinamatsuri. The shop cultivates its own bean paste in-house.
Best for Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored Edo-period wedding confection
Koshiyama Kanseido has made wagashi in Kanazawa since 1888, when it opened in the Yasue-cho district; the shop has since moved to Owari-cho but has kept the handmade methods it started with, including cultivating its own bean paste rather than buying it in - a step the shop treats as the single most important factor in its flavor. Its best-known item is Kaga Goshiki Namagashi, the five-colored fresh confection developed in the Edo period specifically for Kanazawa weddings and still served at them today, alongside kikatou, the sculpted sugar sweets traditionally displayed for Hinamatsuri, Girls' Day. The everyday range includes Himuro Manju, a steamed bun made using a fermented starter culture passed down within the shop, seasonal nerikiri shaped and colored to match the month, and regional standards like sakura mochi and a lotus-root mochi. A newer offshoot, Kanazawa Dorayaki, extends the same fermented-bean approach into a dorayaki built around fermented azuki paste. Across more than 135 years, the shop has stayed close to its original brief - traditional Kanazawa confections made by hand, tied to the city's specific calendar of weddings and seasonal festivals rather than a generic wagashi lineup sold everywhere in Japan.
Family-run since 1883, La Pintora bakes traditional Galician bread, empanadas and seasonal sweets like panettone and mazapan from its Val Miñor shops in Nigran, Baiona and Sabaris. It ranks among Spain's top 50 bakers per La Ruta Española del Buen Pan.
Best for Galician bread and empanadas from a top-50 Spanish bakery
La Pintora has baked in Galicia's Val Miñor region since 1883, giving the family business more than 140 years of continuous operation -- a span the bakery itself describes as "elaborando productos artesanales, tradicionales y de calidad," crafting artisanal, traditional, quality products across generations.
Its range covers the staples of Galician baking: traditional breads and bolleria, savory empanadas, and seasonal reposteria including panettone, turrones and mazapan around the holidays, alongside custom cakes and event catering. The business now operates from three shops across the Val Miñor area -- Nigran, Baiona and Sabaris.
That longevity and craft focus have drawn formal recognition: La Pintora has been named among Spain's top 50 bakers, and has received acknowledgment from both La Ruta Española del Buen Pan (the Spanish Route of Good Bread) and the La Miga de Oro awards.
Making cajeta from 100% goat's milk in Celaya since 1860, La Tradicional de Salgado slow-cooks its caramel and bottles it alongside coconut sweets, wafers and wine-laced confections. The family firm ships its Marca GTO-certified sweets across Mexico from its shop on Benito Juarez street.
A heritage Taiwanese pastry shop selling traditional cakes, tea and gift boxes from its Dihua Street location. The Taipei city profile dates the shop to 1895 and lists current hours and address.
Best for Traditional cakes, tea, and gift boxes from a Dihua Street pastry shop dating to 1895
Lilamand has made candied fruit and calissons by the same family method since 1866, hand-peeling whole melons and pineapples before candying them in Provence's traditional slow-syrup process. Alongside its original Saint-Rémy-de-Provence workshop, the fifth-generation confectioner runs a shop on Rue de la République in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue stocked with nougats, fruit pastes and preserves.
Basque confectionery since 1895 — mouchous, tourons, and kanougas crafted in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Best for Mouchous, tourons, and kanougas — Basque sweets from Saint-Jean-de-Luz since 1895.
Maison Pariès was established in 1895 as a Basque gourmet specialist, originating as a master chocolate maker in Bayonne before relocating operations to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where its first store opened in 1914. The house gained regional fame through two signature innovations: Le Kanouga, a caramel and fondant creation attributed to founder Jacques Damestoy (introduced 1905), and individual Basque cakes available in classic flavors including cherry, chocolate, hazelnut, and citrus. In 1948, Robert Pariès (lending his name to the modern brand) created an additional signature sweet—two joined round halves encasing a soft, almond-rich, low-sugar center. The 2007 introduction of 'Goxo' expanded the portfolio with homemade hazelnut or almond nougatine coated in dark or milk chocolate. The business maintains its location on Rue Gambetta approximately 100 meters from Place Louis XIV and the Church of St Jean Baptiste, positioning it as a cultural institution within the Basque town. Beyond confectionery, Maison Pariès produces artisanal sorbets (over 60 years of production) and ice creams refined through traditional recipes.
A Niigata confectioner founded in 1878, Maruya Honten makes wagashi and Western-style sweets at its Furumachi flagship. It sells seasonal sweets, chestnut yokan and rice-flour cookies in store and through its online shop.
Memorable bakes torta galesa (since 1996) and alfajores to a six-generation Welsh family recipe from Chubut's 1865 Mimosa settlers, from its Trelew flagship plus Puerto Madryn and Buenos Aires shops, alongside chocolates and jams.
Best for Torta galesa and alfajores made to a six-generation Welsh family recipe
Memorable traces its recipes back six generations, to the Welsh colonists who settled Chubut province after arriving aboard the Mimosa in 1865 — the ship that founded the Welsh settlement in Argentine Patagonia. The bakery's flagship sits at Soberanía Nacional 198 in Trelew, with a second Chubut location in Puerto Madryn and a newer outpost in Buenos Aires' Palermo neighborhood, on Malabia 1325, framed by the brand as "a pedacito de Patagonia" — a little piece of Patagonia — brought to the capital. Alongside its alfajores, which the company says were voted Argentina's best artisanal alfajor by roughly 30,000 people, Memorable has made torta galesa since 1996: a dense, dark Welsh fruit cake built from walnuts, raisins, macerated fruit, spirits and spices, distinct from a standard sponge cake and specific to the Welsh-Patagonian baking tradition rather than generic Argentine repostería. The shop rounds out its shelves with chocolates, jams and tea, and ships nationwide with same-day dispatch plus an international e-commerce option for customers outside Argentina. The throughline across three locations and more than a century of family recipes is the same: a business built specifically around Welsh-Patagonian heritage baking.
Munding has run from the same Gumpphaus building on Kiebachgasse since 1803, making it Tyrol's oldest confectionery-café. Its kitchen still tempers Valrhona chocolate into pralines and bakes tortes from recipes handed down through the family that has owned it ever since.
Established in 1841 and now run by the fourth generation of the founding family, this North Kolkata sweet shop is best known for karapak and other sandesh varieties made from fresh chhana. It also produces payesh and chandrapuli, supplying households and corporate clients across the city.
Best for Karapak sandesh from a nearly 200-year-old kitchen
Founded in Meiji 6 (1873), this Nobeoka confectioner still makes its wagashi and Western sweets by hand from recipes passed down for over a century. Its yokan and seasonal namagashi are sold from the family shop on Agata-machi in central Nobeoka.
Best for Wagashi, yokan, Japanese confectionery, Western confectionery, namagashi
Newens has baked its curd-filled Maids of Honour tart, tied to a Tudor-era Henry VIII legend, on Kew Road since 1860. Robert Newens took over the recipe in 1850, and it has been locked away, unpublished, since 1957.
Best for Robert Newens took over the recipe in 1850
The Maids of Honour tart takes its name from a Tudor-era legend: Henry VIII is said to have tasted the little curd tarts after seeing the Queen's ladies-in-waiting eating them, liked them enough to name them, and later had the recipe locked away at Richmond Palace. Whatever the truth of the royal story, a Maids of Honour shop is documented in Richmond from the early 18th century, and Robert Newens served his apprenticeship there before taking over the tradition of baking and selling the tarts in 1850. He moved the business to its current site on Kew Road in 1860, where it has operated ever since.
Newens has held its own version of the recipe under lock and key since 1957, and the tart, a puff pastry shell filled with sweetened curd cheese, remains the shop's core product, baked fresh and served warm alongside a wider bakery and tearoom menu of pies, cakes and savouries. The tearoom next door serves coffee, cake, full afternoon tea and lunch using the same traditional methods, and the bakery still takes orders for wedding and occasion cakes. Few bakeries anywhere can point to a documented, continuously operating home on the same street for more than 160 years.
Nobis Printen has baked Aachener Printen since 1858, alongside soft printen, bite-size printis and Aachener Domspitzen from its Charlottenburger Allee bakery. It holds Fairtrade certification and North Rhine-Westphalia's MEISTER.WERK.NRW craft award.
Best for Aachener Printen gingerbread since 1858, Fairtrade-certified
Nobis Printen has baked Aachener Printen -- the spiced, treacle-dark gingerbread native to the city -- since 1858, making it one of the longer-running names in Aachen's Printen trade. Its main bakery sits on Charlottenburger Allee, supplying both the bakery's own cafes and dedicated Printen specialty stores in the historic center.
The range goes beyond the classic hard biscuit: Nobis also bakes a softer printen, bite-sized "printis," and Aachener Domspitzen, alongside everyday bread, rolls and lactose-free options sold online and in-store. The business has built a modern sustainability profile onto its 19th-century roots, using Fairtrade-certified chocolate and organic coffee in its products.
That combination of tradition and certification has been recognized externally: Nobis holds the MEISTER.WERK.NRW craft award from North Rhine-Westphalia, along with DLG and GGA quality endorsements and membership in the Eifel regional producers' brand.
Okamotoya has operated in Beppu's Myoban hot-spring district since 1875. Its shop makes signature jigoku-mushi pudding, steamed with geothermal heat, and sells yunohana mineral bath crystals harvested in traditional hillside huts; the family also runs the adjoining Okamotoya ryokan.
Best for Hell-steamed pudding and yunohana bath crystals
Mackinac Island's original fudge maker since 1887, Original Murdick's hand-cooks fudge, brittle and toffee on marble slabs using Michigan sugar, cream and cherries. Boxes and gift selections ship nationwide from its online shop.
Confectioner founded in 1887 whose signature nikki-dama are hard cinnamon candies boiled and shaped by hand in small batches. The Honmachi shop also sells black-cinnamon sweets under the Gujo brand label.
Francesco Panarello started this pastry business in 1885 and it has passed through four generations making Genoese classics including pandolce, lagaccio biscuits and canestrelli. It runs several retail shops across Genoa and the Ligurian coast in addition to its wider distribution.
Pastéis de Belém has baked its custard tarts since 1837 to a recipe traced to the Jerónimos Monastery, still guarded in-house and known only to its master confectioners. The tiled dining rooms in Belém serve the tarts warm, dusted with cinnamon and sugar at the table.
Best for Original pastéis de nata since 1837
Pastéis de Belém traces its recipe to the Jerónimos Monastery, whose sugar refinery and general store sat beside the site the bakery now occupies. When Portugal's 1834 decree shut down the country's convents and monasteries, someone connected to the monastery began selling the sweet pastries commercially from the attached shop — the origin, by the bakery's own account, of what would become its best-known product. Baking under the name Pastéis de Belém began formally in 1837.
The recipe itself has stayed inside the business since then, "passed on and known exclusively to the master confectioners who hand-craft the pastries in the 'secret room.'" The bakery describes the formula as unchanged to the present day — a claim that rests on keeping the recipe internal rather than published, guarded across generations of confectioners rather than written down for outside use.
Today the pastries are served warm in the bakery's tiled dining rooms in Belém, dusted table-side with cinnamon and sugar. Nearly two centuries after a monastery closure forced a recipe out of religious hands and into a commercial shop, the tarts remain tied to the same neighborhood and, per the bakery, the same formula.
Founded in Rapallo in 1862, Pasticceria Canepa is known for cubeletti, the town's shortcrust-pastry sweets filled with quince jam. It also bakes traditional Ligurian pandolce genovese, panettone and pandori to time-honoured recipes.
Best for Cubeletti di Rapallo and traditional Ligurian pastries
Pasticceria Copello, a Chiavari confetteria founded in 1826, still makes the rare sciroppo di rose, a syrup pressed from rose petals, alongside candied fruit and traditional Ligurian sweets. Its counters carry canditi, chocolates and the local dolce 'Ciavai'.
Milan's jewel-box pasticceria since 1824 — panettone and pralines in Wes Anderson-worthy packaging. Prada acquired an 80 percent stake in March 2014. The Santa Maria alla Porta shop was left unchanged.
Best for Panettone and gift boxes of Milanese elegance.
Facing the Villa Bellini gardens on Via Etnea, Savia has fried arancini and layered Sicilian sweets since 1897, and is widely credited with the granita-and-brioche breakfast that defines the city's mornings. The counters run to cannoli filled to order, cassata, minne di Sant'Agata and marzipan fruit alongside savory rusticana.
Pasticceria Taddeucci has stood on Lucca's Piazza San Michele since 1881, its Antico Buccellato earning a place in Mimi Sheraton's book of foods to eat before dying. It also sells Lucchese cookies, seasonal panettone and pandoro, and runs a hands-on baking experience.
Best for Historic Buccellato since 1881
Pasticceria Taddeucci has operated on Lucca's Piazza San Michele since 1881, putting it at roughly 145 years in the same square. Its signature is the Buccellato, an aniseed-and-raisin ring loaf associated with the city, sold alongside PanPuccini and a range of Tuscan cookies — pistachio biscuits, cantuccini, ricciarelli, pinolate.
The bakery's own account of its history includes a notable outside endorsement: New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton featured the shop's "Antico Buccellato" in her book of foods to eat before dying, and the Taddeucci family has also hosted Prince Charles as a visitor. Seasonal production extends to panettone, pandoro and colomba, including cherry-chocolate and fig-walnut variants, plus tortes, chocolates, pralines and liqueurs sold from the same shop.
For visitors who want more than a purchase, the bakery runs "Taddeucci for a Day," a hands-on session preparing Buccellato and fresh pasta with the family. Between the recipe's age, the shop's unchanged location and a running list of visitors it's fed, the business leans on continuity as its main credential — the same square, the same ring-shaped loaf, for nearly a century and a half.
Enrico Vigoni first baked the Torta Paradiso here in 1878, and the Pavia pasticceria still sells the vanilla-and-lemon cake that became a city symbol. Its Strada Nuova premises pair a pastry shop and online store with a bistrot and wine cellar.
Founded in 1857 by Luigi Leone in Neive, near Alba, this confectioner supplied pastilles to Italy's royal House of Savoy before relocating to Turin in 1934 under new owners Giselda and Celso Balla; still made with the original bronze moulds.
Best for Vintage-tin pastilles and Torinese sweets.
Luigi Leone began making digestive pastilles in 1857 in Neive, a small town near Alba in Piedmont, starting with mint, cinnamon and clove flavors sold from his own shop. The business grew into an official supplier to the Italian royal House of Savoy, and among its regular customers was Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, whose fondness for the violet-flavored gummies reportedly led the confectioner to nickname them "senateurs" in his honor. In 1934, Giselda Balla Monero and her brother Celso Balla took over the company and moved production from the Alba area to Corso Regina Margherita in Turin, modernizing the packaging and marketing while keeping the original recipes. The Monero family ran the business for decades afterward, relocating manufacturing again in 2006 to a modern facility in Collegno, just outside Turin. In 2018, Michela Petronio and Luca Barilla acquired the company, pairing the historic catalogue of pastilles, gummies, gelées and licorice with newer development while preserving production methods that still rely on the same bronze moulds used throughout the company's history. A further expansion, a combined production, museum and visitor facility called "Fabbrica della Felicità," has been planned to open in Collegno. Now approaching its 170th year, Pastiglie Leone remains one of the older continuously operating confectionery houses in Europe.
S. Abdul Khaliq traces its confectionery back to ancestors who served as royal halwa makers under Mughal emperor Humayun, before the family opened its first retail shop in Delhi's Chandni Chowk in 1835 and then established its Karachi flagship in 1947 after Partition. Now run by a third generation, the shop still makes Habshi halwa, barfi, and gulab jamun from those inherited recipes.
Best for Habshi halwa, barfi and traditional mithai
S. Abdul Wahid Sweets descends from the same Mughal-court confectionery lineage as S. Abdul Khaliq, with ancestor Abdul Ghafoor opening the original shop in Delhi's Chandni Chowk in 1830 after gaining permission to sell the family's closely held royal halwa recipes to the public. Its Karachi branches, now run by the newest generation since 2018, still trade on that 1830 dateline and the same inherited sweet-making methods.
A family confectioner pulling and cutting boiled sweets by hand on Nørregade since 1891, working with methods over a century old under a Danish royal warrant. Visitors can watch fruit drops, filled bonbons and liquorice being shaped in the open workshop.
Staraya Tula has baked the city's tula pryanik gingerbread since 1881, which the company describes as the oldest gingerbread enterprise in the city, and now runs three branded shops across the city alongside a gingerbread museum. Visitors can also book a hands-on pryanik-making masterclass at the factory.
Best for Tula's oldest gingerbread maker, with its own museum
Staraya Tula has produced tula pryanik — the city's traditional spiced, filled gingerbread — since 1881, and describes itself as the oldest enterprise in Tula's gingerbread industry. The factory has maintained continuous production through more than 140 years, adapting its offerings from standard 130-gram gingerbread to souvenir editions, premium "Extra" varieties, and hand-decorated pieces sold in gift boxes.
Beyond the factory on Staronikitskaya Street, the business runs branded retail shops across Tula, including a location inside the SK-Royal Hotel on Sovetskaya Street and two "Tulskiy Pryanik" shops. A gingerbread museum, attached to one of the Staronikitskaya Street locations, documents the craft's history and role in regional culture — the bakery describes its product as more than a sweet, calling it a souvenir and a symbol of regional pride.
Visitors can book hands-on masterclasses in gingerbread making and decoration at the factory, alongside standard retail purchases from any of the branded shops.
Toraya has made wagashi since the early 16th century, when it began supplying confections to the imperial court in Kyoto before following the court to Tokyo in 1869. Its Kyoto Ichijo shop, near the old Imperial Palace, still occupies ground tied to that founding relationship and sells confections shaped to the season.
Best for Traditional wagashi tied to the imperial court
Founded in 1883 near Dōgo Onsen, Tsuboya is the originator of the three-colour Botchan dango immortalised in Sōseki's novel, still hand-rolling each skewer in small batches. Buy them at the little Matsuyama shop or through the online store.
Tsuruya Hachiman has made wagashi at Osaka's Koraibashi since 1863, carrying on the recipes of an older Kyoto-style confectioner. The shop mills and cooks its own bean paste in house, selecting materials for each sweet from decades of experience.
A confectioner in Takayama since 1890 making about thirty kinds of dagashi folk sweets from soybeans, sesame and peanuts, including its award-winning mameita bean crackers. The house also sells genkotsu kinako and black-sesame kokusen from its shop and online.
Imperial confectioner since 1847 in Vienna, operating multiple venues with fine chocolates, marzipan, the signature Gerstner torte, and catering.
Best for Fine chocolates, marzipan, and the signature Gerstner torte since 1847
Gerstner was founded in 1847 and holds the title "K. u. K. Hofzuckerbäcker" (Imperial and Royal Court Pastry Chef), reflecting its long association with Viennese culinary tradition. The house operates multiple prestigious venues across Vienna: Palais Todesco in the 2nd district with a full complement of shop, confectionery, chocolatier, café, bar, and restaurant; Schloss Schönbrunn (Schönbrunn Palace) with café, restaurant, and retail; the Vienna State Opera with café and bar service since 1869; the Vienna Philharmonic Concert Hall with exclusive catering; and Messe Wien Exhibition Center with congress catering. Gerstner specializes in fine chocolates, marzipan, and its signature Gerstner torte, representing centuries of Viennese pastry mastery. The company emphasizes "das Prinzip des höchsten Anspruchs" (the principle of highest standards) and offers an online confectionery shop alongside its physical operations and event catering services.
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