My relationship with breakfast is a dysfunctional one–one month I’ll eat nothing but high fiber cereal as I read my morning e-mails, and the next I’ll find myself piercing five runny yolks every working week. I enjoy the variety, but it is a by-product of a constantly changing A.M. schedule. However, the upside to this is that I have been able to sample my way through pretty much every palm-sized morning treat north of Union Square, and along the way, I have found a few favorites.

Two of them come from Sullivan Street Bakery on 47th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. The shop’s owner, Jim Lahey, a man whom you may recognize as the originator of that no-knead bread recipe, is an Italian bread savant. His pugliese loaves are without peer, but in the morning, I have grown very partial to his two seasonal fruit pastries. One, the brioche alla frutto stagionale (pictured in rear on right, $2.50) is a sticky, glazed affair made with tangy mascarpone cheese and sliced fruit (green plums, apricots, cherries), all piled onto a sweet dough base and sprinkled with slivered almonds. The other Sullivan Street pastry of my affection is the flaky torta sfoglia stagionale (pictured in foreground on right, $2.50), a gooey little round piece of fruit pie that leaves me covered in crumbs every time, but which is worth every little doughy fleck I find on myself. Also made with fresh, seasonal fruit, this pastry seems to contain messier, gloppier soft fruits better than the brioche does–hence the occasional appearance of berries and rhubarb in the filling line-up.

And then there is my other favorite, Café Zaiya’s almond yaki manjyu (pictured left, $3.95 for four), a crumbly, toasted almond confection filled with a dense and perfectly sweet red bean paste. Surprisingly, the nutty manjyu pairs better with a strong cup of coffee than anything Starbucks sells. A hot cappuccino and two almond manjyu might not be a match that anyone predicted would work well, but when I cannot make myself a bigger, healthy breakfast, it is a combination splendid enough to keep me smiling until lunchtime.

Sullivan Street Bakery, 533 West 47th Street, 212-265-5580.
Café Zaiya, 18 East 41st Street (between Fifth and Madison Avenues), 212-779-0600.