Like a jack-o'-lantern, a cake looks better when it's candlelit and unsmooshed. Embrace the structural integrity of sweet, sweet displays with today's Groupon to Lana's Dazzling Desserts in Wheeling. Choose between the following options:

• For $5, you get $10 worth of pastries.
For $19, you get an 8-inch cake (a $39 value).

This deal expires November 15, 2011.

Lana's Dazzling Desserts crafts elegant, picturesque pastries that channel flavor from fresh ingredients rather than tall mountains of sugar. The pastry mavens drape delicate confections in complex tastes, building individual pastries ($4.49) bursting with layers of contrasting notes. A bulbous chocolate fleur de sel caramel threads gourmet salt through its dark interior, and pairs of macaron patties trap raspberries and rose-flavored buttercream in the floral Ispahan. Mini pastries ($1.37–$1.69) also lend themselves to mix-matching, with a chocolate-coffee cup cradling sweet mousse and a lemon tart puckering lips thanks to a vienna tart shell topped with pistachio crumbles and a single raspberry. Lana's 8-inch cakes fete any occasion, particularly "I'm hungry" parties, with moist, rich cakes that boast enough saccharine fluff to feed 12–15 gracious guests.