First Bites - May 2023 - Sweet Tooth
Cookie mom
Susan Huang developed the idea for a ready-to-bake sliceable cookie product while attending pastry school at Northwest Culinary Academy. A former healthcare administrator with a background in project management, she was looking for a change and decided to pursue the school’s professional pastry and bread diploma in 2021. A few months after graduating, she launched Evie + Charlie, named for her twin girls and offering a range of frozen cookie doughs, packaged simply and smartly in parchment paper that can also be used to line a cookie sheet while baking the cookies. The remainder of the packaging, a simple paper band, can be recycled. The doughs boast top-quality ingredients such as Callebaut chocolate. Huang explains that another defining feature is the brown butter process she uses, which gives a distinctive “toffee caramel back note.”
It was also important to Huang that the cookies had the right balance of sweetness. “Being a mom, I’m conscious about food choices,” she says. Acknowledging that sugar plays more than one important role in baking, Huang says, “I cut the sugar as much as I can without affecting the texture.”
Besides classic chocolate chip, which Huang has named “OG,” Evie + Charlie offers a range of cleverly named favourites including “Robert Brownie Jr” and “Thank You Very Matcha 2.0.” Huang is passionate about exploring flavours and Evie + Charlie’s website often features one-off, short-run specials.
Huang took what she calls an iterative approach to her product development, starting off at farmers' markets, listening to customers and making changes along the way. Huang emphasizes that her product makes it easy and convenient to have gourmet-quality cookies at home and encourages families to bake together.
Evie + Charlie | eviecharlie.ca | @evie_charlie
Find it: The Soap Dispensary, UBC Farm Farmers' Market, Steveston Farmers' Market and online
All things elderberry
Louise Lecouffe and Jed Wiebe are self-declared elderberry enthusiasts. “We fell in love with elderberry,” says Lecouffe, describing the first time they made an elderberry shrub from foraged wild elderberries on their family property in Salmon Arm, B.C.
“Elderberry has a long tradition of use as a food and medicine,” says Lecouffe, who based Elderberry Grove’s first shrub on one created by Hippocrates: one part, one part vinegar and one part honey.
In 2017, Lecouffe and Wiebe started Elderberry Grove after noticing the huge interest in elderberries, but few sources of the fruit grown locally. And today they grow 28 varieties of black elderberries, including those native to B.C. and European varieties. They harvest the berries, which cannot be eaten in their raw form, between August and October and freeze them. During the winter, they thaw the berries and press them into juice. This differs from many elderberry products on the market, which are made from dried elderberries and water.
As well as turning their berries into juice and shrub, Elderberry Grove produces an elderberry syrup that Lecouffe and Wiebe sweeten with honey. They’ve since adjusted their shrub recipe from the Hippocratic version with a higher concentration of elderberry. While its main product is made from elderberry, the farm does supply some elderflower to Arbutus Distillery, which uses it to make their elderflower liqueur. For those who want to grow their own elderberries, Elderberry Grove sells cuttings, but you’ll need to get your name on the email list to be ready when the cuttings come out each year between January and March.
While many look to elderberry for medicinal purposes, the uses go far beyond. Elderberry can be used in drinks and salad dressings, to flavour kombucha, and for a delicious twist on a gin and tonic.
Elderberry Grove
elderberrygrove.ca | @elderberrygrove
Find it: The Soap Dispensary and Kitchen Staples Sprouted Oven (Abbotsford), Goods Health and Wellness, Urban Harvest Organic Delivery (Kelowna), Pomme Natural Market (Port Coquitlam), Eat Good Market, Nature’s Fare Markets (Vernon)
Beer… but make it dessert
A beer that tastes like a Nanaimo Bar? Simon Jongsma, head brewer of Superflux Beer Company, says, “coconut and vanilla are some of my favourite ingredients to work with.” Less focused on the rules governing established styles of beers, Superflux comes up with interesting and unexpected flavours for its beers, which, at first glance, seem more like a dessert than a drink.
Jongsma sums up the brewery philosophy pretty well: “Our goal is to have fun and make things that are delicious.” This approach is evident in a number of Superflux’s lines. Indulgeousness, which is brewed over the winter, and which Jongsma describes as “extreme over the top stouts,” includes Nanaimo Bar and Turtle versions, that the brewer says are “super sweet, rich and delicious.” Using lots of grain and rich malt, the brews are boiled down to make them rich and syrupy and then conditioned using flavourings such as toasted coconut chips, or in the case of the Turtle version, cocoa nibs and dulce de leche. Another series, inspired by Soda Pop, features an Orange Crush Beer.
Come summer, it will be time to keep a look out for Superflux’s Creamery Series, inspired by pastry and desserts. These beers have the character of lighter, simple brews, with a fruit element. Past favourites have included Strawberry Cheesecake, Pineapple Cheesecake and Banana Cream Pie. This year’s Creamery Series feature will be Blueberry Muffin made with blueberry purée and vanilla with brewing grains — oats and flaked wheat — giving the muffin character.
Superflux Beer Company
505 Clark Dr., Vancouver
superfluxbeer.com | @superfluxbeer
