Danielle’s Desserts Offers Southern Goodies, Charm

If you like the sound of old-fashioned caramel cake made with lots of butter, Danielle’s Desserts has a treat in store for you.

Owned by Danielle Poux of McLean, who is also head chef, the dessert shop at Tysons Galleria offers mouth-watering cakes, pies, cupcakes and cookies. The shop is the winner of the 2012 99.5 Hotty Award for best cupcake.

“The theme is American, Southern-style desserts,” Poux told Patch. “We’re trying to not do anything too fancy. We’re trying to transport people back to a time when their grandmothers did a lot of baking from scratch, using just plain old butter and other ingredients. ... We’re trying to get away from the modern-day baking, which involves a lot of mixes. So what we bake a very Southern-style dessert.”

Best-sellers include the Southern caramel cake, chocolate and vanilla cake, sweet potato pie, apple caramel pie, blueberry buckle, coconut cake and cupcakes. Poux finds that basic blends often sell the best: chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing or vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, for example.

The shop has been in current location for three years and has a baking staff of four, including Poux. She’s added some modern treats into the shop’s offerings, such as cake truffles and miniature pies.

“The other things we’re doing is, we’re taking our product that’s sort of retro, and updating it to reflect the culture and the needs and the desires of today,” Poux said.  “... We’re just using our same recipes and our same ingredients, updating them because people are looking for the old-style baking but to reflect their desire to have less calories.”

She’s had the idea of running a bakery in mind for 25 years, during which time she worked in management and human resources for different companies. “I had to find the right time in my life,” she said.

Poux is also considering branching out and starting a second location in the District of Columbia. What she loves most about the job is doing something, in her words, that makes people so happy.

“I have found that people look forward to getting their dessert, or people will come in and they’ll say, ‘I’ve just really had a bad day and I needed to come here,’ ” she said. “So, that is so gratifying for me.”

Danielle’s Desserts is located on the third level of the mall, next to Saks Fifth Avenue.