My sweet tooth was treated to squeal-worthy delights practically everywhere I traveled these past 365 days. From an edible winterscape in Chicago to the plushiest jelly- and cream-filled doughnuts in London, here are the 10 very best sweets that I had the pleasure of indulging in this year…

Doughnuts from St. John Bakery in London, England

Jelly doughnuts have a way of being either too sweet or too much of a good thing, but the ones filled with apple and rhubarb jam at St. John Bakery were perfectly sticky and sour and balanced. The custard-filled ones were lighter than expected, while the sugar-dusted dough was as ideal as I had hoped. What impressed me most was that even though the dough wasn’t freshly fried, it tasted like it had been—fresh and fluffy.

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Choux aux Sésames from Pâtisserie Chantilly in Lomita, CA

Chef Keiko Nojima’s French pastries with a Japanese flare are nothing short of spectacular. While every dessert lining the pastry counter is impeccable, it’s the black sesame cream puff that gets all the good press. Each pâte a chou shell is filled to order with black sesame-infused whipped cream, drizzled with mesquite honey, and sprinkled with soy powder. The intense and pure flavor that Chef Nojima is able to extract from the black sesame seeds is incredible—neither too much cream nor sugar cloud the main event.

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2012 goes down in Gastronomy history as the tastiest year yet. There were trips to Vegas, Chicago, Boston, and the coast of Maine early in the year. When summertime rolled around, we whisked my mother away on an epic trip to London and France in celebration of her 60th birthday. Just as soon as the plane from Europe touched ground at LAX, I delved head first into an extraordinary book project that had me gorging all over Los Angeles County, uncovering and documenting the very best of what the city has to eat.

It’s gonna be damn difficult to top this Year in Delicious in the future, but I’m more than willing to try. Without further ado, here are the 10 best savory dishes that I ate this year…

Meat Fruit from Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London, England

Dipped in a paprika-tinged gelatin mixture at precisely 27 degrees Celsius, the chicken liver parfait looked identical to a mandarin orange. From the stem to the leaves to dimples on the peel, every detail was spot on. While the chicken liver parfait looked like a piece of citrus, it tasted like the silkiest foie gras torchon ever, with the faintest trace of orange. How the kitchen transformed chicken livers into foie gras is a mystery to me, but damn, we were all thoroughly impressed.

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Escargots dans la Coquille from Les Terrasses de Corton in Burgundy, France

The escargots dans la coquille came smothered in a triple-punch of garlic, parsley, and butter. We had a ball spearing the snails with the tiny forks and removing the fleshy coils from their shells. Knowing that escargots are a Burgundian specialty, I held off on eating any while in France until we were officially in the region. These tender and buttery morsels were worth the wait!

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