San Francisco Street Food Festival: Top 4 delectable desserts

The 4th annual San Francisco Street Food Festival is over, we're starting to recover, and the results are in!

Listed below are our favorite four desserts from the festival, along with a few pictures above -- though we must sheepishly admit that by this point in the day, we were often too full and festively plump to actually take the camera out of our pocket.

Of course, we sadly didn't get to try all the desserts that caught our sweet tooth's eye -- if you thought the lines at the Street Food Festival were long, you obviously didn't see the extra super duper enormous lines at all the dessert places. And our doctor also told us too much sweet stuff could kill us, but that's another story (and we didn't listen anyways, duh).

These dishes are listed in alphabetical order of the vendor (not in order of deliciousness).

Clairesquares: Deep Fried Caramel Pop

We were pretty nuts about this at the media preview dinner, and it was just as good this time around. Clairesquares' owner Claire told us she starts with a ball of caramel, adds butter and shortbread crumbs and then deep fries it to create this delicous treat. Add some of her homemade raspberry sauce on top, and you're pretty much in glutinous heaven.

Each batch can take seven to eight hours to make, and Claire said she spent about two weeks preparing 2,800 pops for the festival -- all of which sold out.

Hella Vegan Eats: Green Curry Coconut Paleta

Putting a surprising twist on the paleta (a Latin American popsicle usually made from fruit), Hella Vegan Eats struck again with this curry popsicle, which tasted exactly like it sounds -- like frozen coconut Thai curry. Not exactly your typical dessert item, but well done and delicious.

The Slanted Door: Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

An established restaurant in SF's Ferry Building, the Slanted Door came to the festival with bread pudding and fried chicken (which we sadly didn't get to try this year but loved last year).

The dessert was exactly as advertised, to perfection -- soft, melt-in-your-mouth bread pudding with sweet whiskey sauce that was good enough to drink (which one of our tasting crew was ready to do, if another team member hadn't stopped him for health, sanity and embarassment reasons).

Three Twins Ice Cream: Lemon Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich

Delicious lemon cookie ice cream crammed between tasty cracker/cookies, this dessert was a formidable opponent and just what the doctor ordered after a long day of stomach expanding. We just wish San Francisco's weather hadn't turned cold and windy by the time we got around to it (damn you, micro-climates!).

For more coverage of the 2012 San Francisco Street Food Festival, including a round-up of our favorite entrees from the festival, check out the rest of SF Foodie's coverage here on Allvoices.