Santa Cecelia Bakery

Amazing family owned Mexican bakery!!! You have to check this out. Everything is made for scratch and it’s massive. I’ll be back and plenty of parking.

Good Mexican bakeries seem to be in short supply in the Atlanta area, but Santa Cecelia delivers the (baked) goods!
My wife’s from San Antonio, and grew up on Mexican sweets and pastries. We go back to San Antonio often, and never skip the bakery while we’re there. While Santa Cecelia may not be on the same level as some of our favorite Mexican bakeries in San Antonio, we both agreed that all of the items we tried were very good, and done «right.»
Everything tasted freshly baked, the portions were huge, and the prices were incredible. We got 2 chocolate conchas (sweet bread), orejas (ear-​shaped puff pasty), a large cookie, and a huge cinnamon roll puff pasty (don’t know the proper name for it) for just over $ 5! It was easily enough to split between 6 – 8 people. Even though there were only 3 of us, we wanted to sample a bunch of different things, so we’ll just have to «suffer» through finishing everything over the next day or 2. Keep in mind that the pastries likely won’t last for much longer than that.
The one knock I would give Santa Cecelia, as the other reviewer also pointed out, is that they don’t have any labels on the cases. Fortunately, we were familiar with most of the items, but it would be nice to have short descriptions for those that aren’t familiar with the items.
The other reviewer also mentioned that the pastries were not as sweet as expected, but in my experience, I’ve always found Mexican pastries to be less sweet than what one might expect from typical American sweets. If you’re expecting a Krispy Kreme doughnut, you’ll probably be disappointed. I definitely wouldn’t knock Santa Cecelia at all in this regard, as I found the sweetness level to be what I’ve come to expect from other Mexican baked goods that I’ve had.
If you’ve never experienced a Mexican bakery, or are just looking for a solid one in the Atlanta metro, be sure to check out Santa Cecelia!

WHY SO DRY?
This little Mexican bakery is located in the Village Shopping Center with San Miguel, (Mexican bakery and taqueria). It carries a variety of baked/​fried items such as cake, cupcakes, donuts and traditional pastries. My husband and I were looking for a delicious pastry snack.
As we explored the various options, we were surprised by the following:
The serving sizes are huge! The cake was at least 2.5 inches high and the pastries were like small frisbees.
We also noticed that their pastries are not nicely glazed as our pastries are and that instead of using powdered sugar, they used granulated sugar on their donuts. I don’t like grit on my pastries.
For the most part the items looked very dry and therefore not very appetizing. Unfortunately, it was difficult to tell if the items were really fresh.
That thing that is shaped like a cinnamon roll and looks like a cinnamon roll with raisins is not a cinnamon roll. It is a savory roll shaped like a cinnamon roll and those raisin like bits are actually chopped peppers. I don’t like seeing savory treats mixed with desserts because it confuses the flavors.
There are no labels describing the various desserts.
For those of you who have acquired a taste for these treats, you now have a new option. If you are new to Mexican desserts, just know that they are quite different from American desserts starting with the primary ingredients and toppings. Proceed with caution.