V-Day + The Big Game
Valentine's Menu is Live, A Red Dye 3 alternative you'll dye for, and a perfect Pink Copycat Dip for your Superbowl Party
Valentines Day has been a favorite day forever. What other holiday is more associated with chocolate, flowers, gift giving, kissing, candy, romance, and the undertone of love? Certainly not the 4th of July.
Our Valentine’s Menu dropped this week. And it was a true personal challenge to edit the menu. One of the favorite elements this year is our naturally-dyed pink frosting that we use in our Heartthrob Cake, Doodles, and upcoming market specials.
A Better Dye
With all the news surrounding the ban of Red Dye 3 I want to advocate for CRANBERRY frosting as the natural alternative that achieves a beautiful rosy pink hue relying on natural ingredients alone. We cook down regional cranberries from Breezy Hill Orchards with organic maple, Tahitian vanilla, then puree it with our organic maple frosting for a beautiful, flavorful—and definitely not banned by the FDA—pink frosting.
This recipe aligns our passion for regional sourcing with our nostalgia for old junky sweets, and desire to turn that love into something new.
A Southern California childhood shopping mall favorite, Mrs. Fields, is the inspiration behind our chocolate chip cookie cakes with frosting. I do love an 80’s throwback. This one is cleaned up to be gluten-free sourdough, refined sugar-free, using organic fair trade dark maple chocolate chips, and frosted with our organic maple cream.
Having a hard time deciding which you want? I’ll always say follow your heart💗. All our sweets do freeze well so if you have any leftovers, just wrap them tightly and keep in an airtight container or Stasher in the freezer.
Something that I think we don't share enough is that below the surface of our whimsical, colorful brand is a serious commitment to regional sourcing and slow method processing. These form the foundation of flavor, nutrition, and digestibility. To be a bakery at the GrowNYC Greenmarket, there is a Bakers Rule that every baker follows: there must be a minimum 25% regional grains used in each assortment.
As we are gluten-free, this is a very complex rule to work with since few gluten-free grains grow in the region besides oats, buckwheat, and in some farther reaches like Maryland, sorghum and millet.
All our breads are made without commercial yeast. Instead we grow a live organic gluten-free sourdough starter, hand-milling organic brown rice from Polit organic farm in California. When a whole bran is milled, you have the entire exterior and interior of the grain in the finished bag of flour. This brings fiber, minerals, vitamins, nutrients that the sourdough bacteria feeds off of, but also goes directly into the food.
Since there is no certified gluten-free flour available in the Northeast, we take very specific steps to create our own flour. We order pallets of organic regional oat flour from Maine Grains that we then toast in small batches and cool. We then hand-mill the complete grain in large batches. Milling this whole cracked oat in-house is important because we are trying to avoid any milling cross contamination that may occur; it also helps ensure the freshness of flour.
A bag of organic flour on the shelf is likely a better purchase than a super processed counterpart. But that flour usually has been stored in a grain shed stored for a period of time, slowly loosing some of its nutritional content with each passing day from when it was milled. Oat flour has a high fat content. To avoid it going stale or rancid, all commercial oat flour uses a steaming process to stabilize the fats and to make it possible to sit on a shelf for a much longer time.
Our recipes may appear simple, but the complexity of the flavors comes with the time we take and the specific ingredients we use that cannot be bought off the shelf.
Want to reserve your favorites first? Place orders for our classics in advance.
This weekend is the Superbowl. Thinking and talking about snacks we have enjoyed is a favorite pastime with my Sunday UWS market staffer Landon. She shared her favorite dip that she enjoys with our crackers - “Bitchin’ Sauce.” I had never heard of it, but love that its an almond-based dip, something a little different than a classic hummus.
After looking at the ingredients, I came up with my own version. The almonds are sprouted to unlock easier digestion and nutrition, beets are abundant at the market right now and perfect for a pink hue. Since pink is lacking in American football, this will make a perfect compliment to any Superbowl party with our crackers! You also can use cut-up radishes that are in a rainbow of colors at the market, kohlrabi, or celery sticks if you mistakenly eat all the crackers up.
Halftime Show Dip - aka Pink Sprouted Almond Dip
This dip requires a little prep the day before you plan to make it. I usually set up the almonds and beets the night before, so I can make the dip in the morning and have it ready by evening, but go at your own pace. This keeps in the refrigerator for up to 4 days, can also be used as a dip for proteins, veggies, our crackers!