Oliv Café

Charcoal walls, modernist chairs and slab tables give this corner cafe on a happening street in Mitte a contemporary edge; but this is the place to go for homey slices of German cheesecake made with Quark, jars of puckery fruit crumble and wedges of flourless chocolate cake. The baristas at Oliv are experts and the coffee is delicious, as are the sandwiches and vegetable quiches served with a tangle of greens for lunch. In warm weather, customers cluster around small wooden tables on the street. And in winter, you'll be grateful for the felt sleeve that hugs your glass of Kusmi tea.
• Münzstrasse 8, Mitte, +49 30 8920 6540, oliv-cafe.de. Mon-Fri 8.30am-7pm, Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm

Konditorei und Cafe Buchwald

The Buchwald family has been making Baumkuchen – a layered cake baked on a spit over an open flame, thinly glazed with apricot jam and covered in sugar icing or dark chocolate – for more than 150 years. Not much has changed at the pleasingly old-fashioned cafe and bakery in Tiergarten's Hansaviertel. For a restorative coffee and a slice of Baumkuchen or rich chocolate Herrentorte, ask for your order to be served in the tea salon, which features parquet floors. In fine weather, you can take your snack out to the hydrangea-lined garden that overlooks the river Spree.
• Bartningallee 29, Tiergarten, +49 30 391 5931, konditorei-buchwald.de. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sundays and public holidays 10am-6pm

Café Einstein Stammhaus

Café Einstein, housed in a handsome, turn-of-the-20th-century villa with wood-panelled walls and leather banquettes, is a refined Viennese restaurant and coffee house that prides itself on serving the best versions of Austrian classics, such as Wiener Schnitzel, Tafelspitz and Apfelstrudel, for lunch and dinner. You can while away hours nursing a Wiener mélange, reading a newspaper and surreptitiously eavesdropping on your neighbours, which include luminaries from Berlin's art and theatre scene, or rent out the lovely back garden for a private party. Café Einstein roasts its own coffee and bakes its own bread, pastries and cakes – and serves breakfast all day long.
• Kurfürstenstrasse 58, Tiergarten, +49 30 2639 1918, cafeeinstein.com. Mon-Sun 8am-1am

Brotgarten

Brotgarten was one of Berlin's first wholegrain bakeries when it opened on a quiet Charlottenburg street in 1978. It still produces some of the city's best Vollkorn breads, appealingly dark and sour and stuffed with seeds and grains. The bakery is a slim place that sells up to 29 different types of bread every day and attracts customers from the neighbourhood and around the city. Next door to the bakery, there's the small Brotgarten cafe where you can have a bowl of vegetable soup with a few slices of its inimitable bread, or an afternoon coffee with a wholesome treat, such as wholegrain Linzer Torte or apple cake.
• Seelingstrasse 30, Charlottenburg, +49 30 322 8880, brotgarten.de. Mon-Fri 7am-6.30pm, Sat 7am-2pm, Sun 7am-3pm

The Barn

Passionate about coffee? Head to The Barn, a slither of a cafe on a small street in Mitte where owner Ralf Rüller serves up single origin coffees from micro-roasters such as Denmark's Coffee Collective and Portland's Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Rüller is a fan of the Slow Food movement and does his best to follow its tenets by filling his freshly made sandwiches with local cheeses and meats and serving impressively flaky croissants. For those with a sweet tooth, a slice of homemade carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting, or a pot of creamy rice pudding topped with apple sauce, should do the trick.
• Auguststrasse 58, Mitte, +49 151 2410 5136, thebarn.de. Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-6pm

Pasam Baklava

On a grim strip of Goebenstrasse, straddling the border of Schöneberg and Kreuzberg, is a little gem of a bakery selling nothing but Turkish baklava, all freshly made on the premises. The family-run bakery sells many different kinds of the pastry, either filled with chopped walnuts or pistachios and drenched in syrup, or with a creamy semolina-milk filling nestled in with the nuts. Some of the baklava are made with bird's-nest-like kataifi dough, rolled into tiny cigar or crescent shapes and some with the more familiar phyllo (filo). The pastry is always crisp and fresh, the honey syrup is cool and sweet, and the flavour true and clear.
• Goebenstrasse 12a, Schöneberg, +49 30 2196 2383, pasam-baklava.de. Mon-Sun 10am-8pm

Weichardt Brot

Far from the crowds of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, the family owned Weichardt Brot, sports a bronzed croissant as a door handle and has a stone mill grinding wheat berries into fresh flour in a side room with big windows onto the street. Besides its wholesome loaves of bread, the bakery crafts pastries, sweet breads, Christmas cookies, seasonal marmalades and marzipan confections. But it's Weichardt's Schokosahne Torte that truly warrants a visit – a miracle of pastry engineering, formed from a towering mixture of chocolate and bitter cream that dissolves in your mouth. Go early, as it sells out by noon every day.
• Mehlitzstrasse 7, Wilmersdorf, +49 30 873 8099, weichardt.de. Tues-Fri 8am-6.30pm, Sat 9am-2pm

Sgaminegg

This unassuming deli-cum-cafe, tucked away in a small street in Prenzlauer Berg, is considered a quiet haven by many of the bustling neighbourhood's residents. The emphasis is on organic and local produce, led by a Slow Food philosophy. The coffee is from a local roaster and the lunches are simple and rustic, from tomato soups to southern German potato salad. A side-room features a well-curated selection of wines, artisanal juices, olive oils, chocolates and dry goods. On Saturdays, a small green market selling regional produce, meat and fish sets up in front of the store.
• Seelower Strasse 2, Prenzlauer Berg, +49 30 4473 1525, sgaminegg.de. Tues-Fri 8.30am-6pm, Sat 9.30am-6pm

Bäckerei Balzer

Come early if you want a chance to snagg one of this bakery's famous Streuselschnecken, streusel-topped and sugar-glazed yeast buns that many say are the best in the city. In a neighbourhood where most of the older businesses have long given way to trendy boutiques, galleries and cafes, Bäckerei Balzer has stubbornly held its ground. Opened in the 1920s, it's still a family-run business, and supplies the area with traditional bread rolls, sugar-topped squares of butter cake, fresh apple fritters and miles of Quark cheesecake. The lace curtains and simple interior are a throwback to another time.
• Sophienstrasse 31, Mitte +49 30 282 6537, no website. Mon-Sun 6am-6pm

DoubleEye

Rain or shine, there's never a shortage of people standing in line waiting to order at this tiny coffee bar on the Akazienstrasse in Schöneberg, where small boutiques, cafes and local businesses abound. The low prices at DoubleEye belie the fact that the baristas are world champions and the quality of the coffee is superb; the consensus seems to be that it's the best coffee Berlin has to offer. Bring along some patience until it's your turn to order and some extra change for a Portuguese tart to eat with your cortado.
• Akazienstrasse 22, Schöneberg +49 179 456 6960, doubleeye.de. Mon-Fri 9.31am-6.29pm, Sat 10.05-3.29pm

• Luisa Weiss is a former cookbook editor; she blogs at The Wednesday Chef