Not long ago, Asheville's South Slope was dominated by warehouses. These days, it's stacked with apartment buildings and breweries. And now, add sweet shops to the mix.

French Broad Chocolates' new Cookies & Creamery opened April 11 on Buxton Avenue, across the street from Urban Orchard, serving family-friendly treats well past bedtime.

So, too, with Sunshine Sammies, which has sold ice cream sandwiches and other dairy-shop treats on the far-south end of Lexington Avenue for two years.

A plenitude of bar-crawling crowds craving sugary things keeps owner Susie Pearson's staff hopping: "Especially on summer weekend nights, it's a constant line out the door for four to five hours."

'Ice cream shenanigans'

Jael Rattigan also had nighttime crowds in mind when she and her husband, Dan Rattigan, began planning their latest temple to all things sweet and fun.

Cookies & Creamery occupies the former French Broad Chocolate Factory, which has moved to Riverside Drive. The venue adds a confectionery pop of pastel to Buxton Avenue, sandwiched as it is between The Prospect and Dirty Jack's.

It's open from morning to late at night, serving sundaes, shakes, old-school bars, soft serve and truffles — and even beer and cider floats for adult customers, in addition to espresso drinks made with Methodical Coffee.

"But ice cream is the focus," Jael Rattigan said. "This is where we're going to be producing our ice cream, and we're going to have a more diverse menu of treats and sundaes and ice cream-related shenanigans."

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Such shenanigans include the breakfast sundae, which covers scratch-made peanut butter ice cream with house-made brioche cinnamon toast croutons and granola, whipped cream and a drizzle of honey. Other sundaes will arrive on brownies, bars and cookies with hot fudge, whipped cream and even a French Broad Chocolates truffle.

This will be another source for the chocolate makers' decadent liquid truffles.

Soft serve? It's there in chocolate as well as in a rotating flavor; one early variety is a sunshine-yellow spiced Golden Milk.

In the pastry case are elements that hearken back to Rattigan's Minnesota roots, including old-fashioned cookies and bars, like blondies, brownies and lemon bars, all developed by French Broad Chocolates pastry chef Beth Kellerhals.

"We're calling it comfort desserts," Rattigan said. "It won't be fancy, technique-driven pastries. It will be humble, homemade desserts from my childhood."

Even the whimsical strawberry-bedecked wallpaper in the shop's dining area reflects the fruit-forward design in her childhood kitchen. "That design inspiration came in a dream, and it felt so right to bring that little bit of my history in."

Beside the soft serve, there will be 16 flavors of French Broad Chocolates' core and seasonal flavors, all made with Farm to Home Milk and chocolate the confection company makes from impeccably sourced cacao.

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Look for favorites like the creamery's excellent salted caramel ice cream, as well as Buddha, a vegan coconut milk-based ice cream that lets the cacao shine through in a richer, more decadent way.

Adult treats, too

Though this is a family-friendly place, Cookies & Creamery has not been built as a foil, but rather a compliment to, its surrounding neighborhood, Rattigan said.

"We want people to feel super-pumped to bring their kids here after a Tourists game but, acknowledging and honoring the brewery district, we're also going to offer some beer floats."

That means scoops of ice cream bobbing in local stout or porter, or even in cider from neighboring Urban Orchard. "A scoop of vanilla and classic cider is just so good," Rattigan said.

More:New South Slope Urban Orchard taproom now open; downtown Noble Cider restaurant planned

Beyond warm nostalgia, there's also an element of sustainability that makes these desserts anything but guilty pleasures.

In supplying the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, Cookies & Creamery, factory and cafe, and retail customers like Fresh Market, the company's production of chocolate is up about 25 percent over last year.

That sort of growth also helps lift the people behind scenes, like local farmers and the four principal cacao sources the Rattigans have been working with for years.

"As we grow, we're able to purchase more from them, and we're able to grow together and create mutually beneficial partnerships," Rattigan said.

Not your typical after-school snacks

Over on Lexington, Pearson has ramped up production of her whimsical desserts and snack cakes, also drawing breakfast crowds for house-made toaster pastries and coffee.

A new breakfast menu includes a much, much better take on a Pop Tart, with a flaky, golden pastry crust filled with all manner of things, including Nutella.

More:Sunshine Sammies opens ice cream sandwich shop

Not a sweet breakfast person? If you find the savory breakfast pastry filled with jalapeno cream cheese and a garlicky everything bagel-reminiscent spice blend among the selections, don't skip it.

There are savory doughnut holes made with biscuit dough, plus traditional sweet flavors. There's PennyCup coffee, and you can have it fashioned into a latte using house-made milks, flavored like banana bread and graham crackers. Or, try a retro milk-and-cookie flight.

The evening crowd lines up for those, plus reimagined after-school snacks like "Unicorn Cakes" filled with rainbow buttercream, "Astro Brownies" with colorful sprinkles, chocolate Hostess-like cupcakes filled with house-made Cool Whip and takes on Twinkies called Yellow Submarines.

The ice cream sandwiches that helped put this sweets shop on the map are also there, in wrappers with a fun, retro design.

You can have all of it served to you on a brightly colored plastic tray that may bring you right back to the cafeteria of your youth, though the feeling is 100 percent after school, with no impending math class to worry about.

It's hard to figure whether Pearson is trying to echo '80s nostalgia or early-'50s innocence, but that's probably because she's trying to instill a sort of sweet timelessness.

"I don't want to go to a specific decade, but evoke in people childhood memories of something they ate when they were a kid — just an all-natural version of it."

IF YOU GO

Visit Cookies & Creamery at 21 Buxton Ave. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., and 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday.

Visit Sunshine Sammies at 99 S. Lexington Ave. Check social media for details on hours.