Stollen, yule logs, bonbons, and more: local chefs turn holiday baking into an art form
From Syrian baklava to layered cakes, Metro Vancouver chefs are in full-on festive mode
Sweet Thea Bakery/FruitcakePlus.com.
SOME FOLKS COUNT DOWN until stat holidays show up; others can’t wait till the holiday baking starts rolling out. By no means an exhaustive list, here’s a glimpse at a handful of local spots that take their festive culinary arts seriously.
FruitcakePlus.com.
Sweet Thea Bakery/FruitcakePlus.com
Thea and Laurie Mercer started their journey with Sweet Thea Bakery in 2010, selling all-natural made-from-scratch stollen, fruitcake, cookies, and plum pudding at craft fairs, farmers’ markets, Christmas shows, and other seasonal events across B.C. and Alberta, gaining momentum year after year. With the pandemic, the couple opened a pop-up shop on Vancouver’s Main Street, which proved so popular they launched a small storefront in 2021. Just in time for this year’s festive feasting, they’ve added FruitcakePlus.com to the menu, a one-stop online shop for everything edible on a holiday traditionalist’s wish list.
Let’s start with Sweet Thea Bakery’s small-batch English Christmas fruitcake, which starts in the summer, when straight-from-the-orchard organic sour cherries are soaked in brandy for weeks. Glazed, those cherries are mixed with almonds, brown sugar, a bit of molasses, and cinnamon. Available with or without marzipan icing, the cake, much like a fine wine, gets better with age. Get this: as long as it remains uncut, the cake shouldn’t be refrigerated or frozen for the first two years. As the loaf matures, oils and sugars from the nuts and marzipan slowly infuse it, intensifying its rich, deep flavour. (Once it is cut, the frtuicake should be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerated.)
The same gets-better-over-time principle applies to Sweet Thea’s traditional Christmas pudding: it will last a long time in its original packaging and deepens in flavour as it ages. The team does recommend eating it within the first year or two of purchase, however, and to consider serving it flaming. (And no, it doesn’t contain plums, despite it also being known as plum pudding.)
Other Sweet Thea goodies include cookies (sold in individual varieties or in a mixed box) ranging from almond kipferls, speculas, and linzers to lemon sablés, gingerbread stars, and Florentines.
Then there’s stollen, a traditional northern European fruit bread, made with nuts, baking spices, fruit macerated (soaked) in brandy, a marzipan centre , and a dusting of icing sugar.
Oh Sweet Day! Bakeshop.
Oh Sweet Day! Bakeshop
We love Oh Sweet Day Bakeshop’s Holly Jolly Christmas Cake, and not simply because it’s decorated with things like gingerbread ladies, Christmas trees, candy canes, Santa’s hats, snowflakes, and gift boxes. We also love that you can pick whatever flavour of cake your heart desires from chef-owner Fanny Lam’s repertoire, which includes red velvet, salted caramel carrot, pistachio raspberry, chocolate raspberry, and Earl Grey, among others.
An excellent option for the Cookie Monster in your life is Oh Sweet Day!’s gift box of 32 holiday cookies. Made with preservative-free ingredients, the assortment features several types of shortbread: classic vanilla, Earl Grey, dried cranberry and pistachio, lavender lemon, plus matcha Christmas trees and dark chocolate shortbread stars), chewy ginger spiced cookies, and snow balls (walnut and pecan butter balls). Nut-free alternatives include chocolate chip snowballs and dried cranberry shortbread.
Kafka’s. Photo by Cody Briggs
Kafka’s
While we’re on the topic of cookies, let’s not forget that Kafka’s is known as much for its house-roasted coffee (including fresh-crop proprietary blends and single-origin coffees) as it is for sweet biscuits made fresh daily in house by =dedicated pastry chef Adi Kessleman. This year’s lineup includes sugar cookies in candy cane, Santa belly, snowflake, holly, and other shapes; Linzer cookies, salted chocolate chip; ginger chews with candied ginger; gingerbread people; and Alfajores (the traditional dulce de leche sandwich cookies are found in many Latin American countries).
Mon Paris Pâtisserie.
Mon Paris Pâtisserie
Pastry chef Elena Krasnova has perfected the art of the bûche de Noël. The 2022 yule logs at her Burnaby-based shop comes in three varieties: Blackcurrant Jingle Bells, comprising blackcurrant mousse and blueberry compote with vanilla biscuit and cream; Chocolate Speculoos, with spiced vanilla crémeux and ginger biscuit with dark chocolate mousse; and
Cranberry Cheer (cranberry- and ruby-chocolate crunch, vanilla crème brûlée, redcurrant confit, and almond biscuit with cranberry mousse). Each serves eight people.
Krasnova is a chocolatier, too, with this year’s chocolate offerings including a Holiday Tree in milk or dark chocolate with nuts and dried fruits; the Poinsettia Flower Poet (milk, dark, and ruby chocolate); and holiday Chocolate Bar Box (with five festive half-cylinder-shaped bars in seasonal flavours such as chestnut and rum in dark chocolate; speculoos and raspberry in white chocolate; and lime cheesecake in milk chocolate).
Buttermere Patisserie. Photo by Leila Kwok
Buttermere Patisserie
Buttermere Patisserie’s Jingle Noel is Christmas in cake form. Adorned with hand-made chocolate ornaments, the chocolate mousse cake is layered with decadent brownie, refreshing orange curd, and crunchy orange-praline brittle. Pastry chef-owner Jamie Tung has also knocked it out of the park with the Boxing Day cake, which comes in an edible box made of Zephyr chocolate (complete with a bow!) and filled with a fluffy pistachio sponge cake, spiced pear compote, and pistachio Namelaka (a kind of chocolate cream invented by Ecole Valrhona) topped with a juicy selection of seasonal fresh berries.
Olive & Anchor.
Olive & Anchor
The Horseshoe Bay restaurant has become known for chef/co-owner Lisa Kim’s brandy-raisin bread pudding. Available frozen, it’s family-sized and can be served at brunch, lunch, or dinner.
Goldilocks Bake Shop.
Goldilocks Bake Shop
The beloved Filipino food destination has launched a new Christmas Collection, which includes managing director Maj Yee’s famous gingerbread houses. This year’s designs include a gingerbread birdhouse, townhouse, cottage, and mansion. Depending on the intricacy of the decoration, each one can take as long as 72 hours to assemble and make. New this year are Goldilocks Retro Cakes, featuring buttercream ribbon art and icing in various colours and flavours, including chocolate, marble (chocolate and vanilla swirl), mocha, ube (purple yam), and vanilla.
Beaucoup Bakery and Cafe. Photo by Rich Won
Beaucoup Bakery & Cafe
Among the goodies in the Kits bakery’s Yule Be Home for the Holidays collection are Holiday Bonbons. Chef co-owner Betty Hung’s 12-piece set features two limited-edition flavours: Rhum & Miel with floral local honey and rum-infused chocolate ganache; and Speculoos & Noisette with speculoos hazelnut crunch and spiced blond chocolate ganache. Yule logs come in two flavours this year: Framboise Vanille with vanilla bean mousse, raspberry pressed sablé, raspberry ganache, and jam; and Chocolat et Mont Blanc. Then there’s the Mason Cookie Collection, which consist of three styles: Matcha Chocolate Wreath (piped chocolate cookies dipped in matcha white chocolate made with Paragon Tea Room's matcha powder); Pistachio Rose Shortbread (featuring pistachio shortbread with a touch of rose-infused white chocolate); and Raspberry Yuzu Pinstripe (raspberry and vanilla pinstripe cookies dipped in yuzu couverture).
Tayybeh.
Makers of exquisite Syrian food, Tayybeh is celebrating the winter holidays with a variety of boxes, some savoury and some sweet. On the latter front, Tayybeh Treats consists of a selection of freshly made vegan goodies. Traditional date-and-sesame cookies have shreds of coconut; swaret el set, aka the “Lady’s Bracelet” are golden baklava rounds filled with ground pistachio and topped with syrup; and walnut maamoul cookies are filled with walnuts.
Related Articles
