Chocolate Ganache Pie

 
Chocolate Ganache Pie
Better Living Through Coffee, $3.95 

Each return trip to Port Townsend brings me a little closer to my goal of eating my way through the menu at Better Living Through Coffee, home of "Organic Fair-Trade Coffee & Nutrient Dense Food."  As always, I was curious to see how that nutritional mission applies to sweets and delighted to find that in the case of the housemade pies (blackberry, chocolate, or fig and walnut), it applies deliciously.  My server was a little sparing with the details, but my understanding is that the hefty, hearty crust involves both yogurt and flour ground from sprouted whole wheat; the creamy-chewy dark chocolate ganache is sweetened with minimally-processed succanat and topped with an optional dollop of real whipped cream. 

Better Living Through Coffee
100 Tyler Street  
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-3388

Survival Crackers and Shelter Candy

Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum

Built in 1902, Fort Worden is one of three bases that make up the Northwest's "Triangle of Fire," an interconnected artillery system designed to repel any attempts at a sea invasion of the Puget Sound.  Although the Fort was decommissioned in 1953 without a single aggressive shot ever having been fired, today's Fort Worden State Park and museums contain countless reminders of just how tense times could get for the hundreds of men once stationed in the Fort's damp concrete bunkers. 

While sweets can often appear frivolous, a couple of displays at the Coastal Artillery Museum remind us that as sources of quick, comforting energy, sweets are ideal to have around when the s**t hits the fan.  The Museum's mock fallout shelter is stocked with 31.5-pound tins (photo above) of 756 long-lasting "Bulgur Type" survival wafers; they're made from wheat, shortening, and salt--with a generous amount of corn syrup to make them more palatable. 
 
The Museum also displays small cubic "Carbohydrate Supplements" (photo below):  "In addition to the three types of survival crackers there was also a Carbohydrate Supplement which became known as 'Shelter Candy' and is shown above.  This came in two flavors, Cherry and Pineapple, and was basically hard sugar. "

Other displays reveal that even everyday life at Fort Worden had its sweet side.  One case contains illustrated cookbooks designed for military mess halls; the books are opened to recipes for cinnamon rolls and "sugared snails."  A collection of souvenir menus testify to the lavish nature of the Fort's annual Christmas feast;  the dessert section of each menu features up to a dozen different cakes and pies--along with fruit and cigarettes. 

Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum 
Fort Worden Building 201
200 Battery Way
Port Townsend, WA 
360/385-0373

Pippa's Real Tea

Scone and clotted cream
Pippa's Real Tea, $2

In the ranks of things that taste better than they sound, clotted cream is right up there with fish fingers.  Thick and insanely rich, this luxurious spread is a staple treat in Britain's dairy-farming regions. 

There are a couple of ways of making clotted cream, the easiest being to slowly reduce cream until it's as thick as spackle.  A friend's grandmother used to make a new batch nightly, setting the saucepan of cream in a bain marie over low heat before going to bed; she woke each morning to find the perfectly thickened cream topped with a golden crust of crystallized milkfat--as cheerful and more reliable than the morning sun!

There are even more ways of enjoying clotted cream, in or on baked goods or ice cream, in fudge, on fruit...An Afghan version is mixed with tea and aerated to yield a fuschia beverage enjoyed on special occasions. 

At Pippa's Real Tea in Port Townsend, a container of clotted cream accompanies small, fresh scones and strawberry jam.  You can also order a pot of one of Pippa's dozens of loose-leaf teas to create the classic mid-afternoon snack known in England as a "cream tea."   The farther you get from Devon and Cornwall, the greater your risk that the "cream" component of a cream tea will whipped rather than clotted--but Pippa's doesn't disappoint!

Pippa's Real Tea
636 Water St
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-6060

Pastry by Anca

Shortbread
Pastry Design by Anca, $4.75/bag

Anca Hasson has been making Port Townsend a sweeter place since first starting to sell her pastries at the local farmers market in 2007.   As a child in Romania, Anca entertained herself by making desserts out of the limited ingredients available under rationing; as a young adult she was studying nursing in Alaska when a part-time job at a bakery reignited her childhood passion. 

Today Anca's products are available from many Olympic Peninsula outlets, including the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, Port Townsend's Co-op and Farmers Market, and the Tyler Street Cafe, a downtown PT restaurant owned by Anca's husband, John.

Her massive, tender shortbread cookies (above) come in a range of flavors, including espresso-pecan, and lemon with cornmeal. 

 The chocolate ganache cookie ($2.50 at Tyler Street) has a delicate crust, a gooey chocolate core, and a belt of buttery chopped pistachios. 

The pine nut cookies ($5.25/bag at Chimacum Corner) are perfumed pillows of egg white and almond flour studded with extravagant quantities of toasted kernels. 

Pastry Design by Anca
40-C Seton Rd
Port Townsend, WA

(360) 440-7534

Lavender Ice Cream

Lavender Ice Cream
Purple Haze, $4

Around 1850 settlers who reached the Sequim and Dungeness Bays at the northern end of Washington's Olympic Peninsula began to take advantage of the flat plains and fertile soil left behind by retreating glaciers and the protective "rain shadow" cast by the Olympic Mountains.  They cleared, irrigated, planted, and harvested handsomely, eventually shifting their focus from vegetables to small-scale dairies. 

A little over a century later, a new wave of settlers began to arrive, drawn to the same favorable conditions but for different reasons.  After a syndicated newspaper column for retirees published a letter praising the area's mild weather and low cost of living, the small town of Sequim experienced a population boom.   One struggling dairy farm after another was replaced by housing developments and chain stores. 

But just when it looked like nothing could check the spread of the cul-de-sacs, a Sequim civic committee convened in 1995 with the goal of revitalizing the area's agricultural traditions.  Like the settlers and the retirees, they looked at the landscape and the weather and saw yet another new solution:  lavender. 

Today Sequim has positioned itself as "America's Provence," with more than 30 local farms collaborating on events like the annual Lavender Festival, which attracts thousands of tourists in mid-July.  But visitors who arrive outside the high season don't miss out:  farmstands and shops feature a wild variety of value-added products, from sniffable sachets and soaps, to edible lavender-laced cheeses, cookies, and chocolates.  The Purple Haze farm's mainstreet shop even sells lavender and white chocolate ice cream, produced by Elevated Ice Cream in nearby Port Townsend.  

Purple Haze Lavender Shop
127 W Washington St
Sequim WA
360/683-1714

Don's Pharmacy

Don's Pharmacy Soda Fountain 
Cherry Lime Phosphate (above)

Chocolate Milkshake (below)

Head past the world-class soap selection, gardening tools, and racks of novelty greeting cards to the back of Don's Pharmacy and you'll find a soda fountain installed in 1962 and untouched by the intervening years.  Seating is at your choice of booth or counter stool; service is quick and sassy--but completely genuine, like a sharp-tongued big sister rather than a gum-smacking, beehived retro cliche.  
The waitress is happy to explain some of the menu's more archaic items ("Brown Cow" is a Coke float, "Green River" is a lime soda) and to make recommendations.  She makes milkshakes (below) as thick as spackle from milk and hard-packed ice cream, with an entire second shake in reserve in the mixing cup.  

You can also get a made-to-order phosphate, a tart relic from soda's early days.  Although pharmacists initially introduced soda fountains as a way of making medicine more palatable (see my earlier post on the 1850s soda fountain at New Orleans' Pharmacy Museum) the public soon developed a taste for sweet syrup and fizzy water, minus the medicine.  The addition of phosphoric acid to drinks created a puckery sourness that found many fans; phosphates were a popular and prominent soda fountain offering from the late 19th century through the 1930s.  

Today many so-called phosphates, including those served at Don's, are made with citric acid rather than the harder-to-get phosphoric.  Although the citric acid gave my cherry-lime faux phosphate a deliciously sharp edge (waitress:  "Like drinking a sour patch kid!"), phosphoric acid aficionados claim that nothing matches the experience of genuine article.  

Don's Pharmacy Soda Fountain
1151 Water Street
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-2622

1151 Water StWA 98368

(360) 385-0969

Better Living Through Coffee

Peanut Butter Cookie

Better Living Through Coffee, $2.25

Seemingly stapled onto the backside of a building that fronts historic Water Street, Better Living Through Coffee juts out over the narrow beach and hogs one of Port Townsend's most mesmerizing views.  The light bouncing off the water gives the coffee shop's single room a hazy quality that underlines the vintage feel; not much about the wood-framed room would raise the eyebrows of an 1960s hippie--or even an 1860s settler.  

BLTC specializes in "Organic Fair-Trade Coffee & Nutrient Dense Food."  The coffee is locally roasted and dripped-to-order in a rack of standing filters.  The baked goods are made with organic ingredients and unrefined sweeteners, and some, like this light and melty peanut butter cookie, are also vegan and gluten-free.

Better Living Through Coffee
100 Tyler Street  
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-3388

Courtyard Cafe

Cinnamon Roll

Courtyard Cafe

A family-run restaurant in a old house just off the waterfront, Port Townsend's Courtyard Cafe radiates at least a dozen kinds of warmth.  Although no one actually lives in the canary-yellow building, it has a lived-in hospitality that makes customers feel thoroughly welcome, with comfortably worn furniture, mismatched china, hand-me-down newspapers, and local musicians jamming in the living room.  When the couple behind the counter flirtatiously pelt each other with croutons, it's easy to imagine that you're just a friend of the family, dropping by for brunch.  

The sweet treats include hearty pastries, rustic fruit pies, meal-sized desserts, and hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows toasted tableside with a creme brûlée torch.  Owner Will makes the cinnamon rolls himself and takes great pride in the rapidity with which he goes through sacks of cinnamon; the spice is used so generously that it forms a distinct layer, side by side with the buttery pastry.  

The day-old baked goods are a steal at around $2 for a huge bag; Will's wife Heidi says the cinnamon loaf makes fantastic French toast.  Closed on Tuesdays, the Courtyard Cafe donates Monday-night leftovers to the Port Townsend Food Bank, another sign of this small business' big heart.  

Courtyard Cafe

230 Quincy Street

Port Townsend, WA

360/379-3355

Sweet Laurette's

Black Bottom Cupcakes

Sweet Laurette's, $3.50

Word has it there are no bad choices to be made at Sweet Laurette's, a bakery, cafe, and bistro located a short (uphill) walk from downtown Port Townsend. It was enthusiastically recommended to me by a local grandmother who takes her granddaughter for breakfast every week.

The French-inflected bakery offers coffee by the bowl and indulgent treats such as "Oblivion Torte" (a flourless chocolate torte with bittersweet glaze) and black bottom cupcakes (above; a grown-up Hostess cupcake filled with cream cheese rather than "creme"). There are a few tables out front (below left), a few more inside, and plenty of sunny weather seating in the arbor-shaded side garden. Breakfasts and lunches at the adjoining bistro feature French favorites made with PNW ingredients.

Sweet Laurette's

1029 Lawrence St
Port Townsend, WA 98368

360/385-4886

While in Port Townsend, I stayed at Rosewood Cottage, a ridiculously charming guest house in a quiet, convenient neighborhood between downtown and Fort Worden.

On Common Grounds

Vanilla "Wedding" Cake
On Common Grounds, $4.50/slice

I recently read something that surprised me: serving for serving, vanilla cake generally contains far more sugar than chocolate cake. I decided to take a scientific approach to my doubts, ordering a slice of vanilla "wedding" cake at On Common Grounds, a cheerful bakery and cafe just off the road that most travelers take between Port Townsend and the Hood Canal Bridge. The cake was everything vanilla cake should be: light, buttery, generously frosted and generously proportioned. It was also made with such powerful vanilla that I knew it would be coming out of my pores for at least the next 24 hours.

Just minutes after I scraped the last frosting off the plate and set down my fork, my eyes went glassy and my pancreas started revving like an airplane engine: scientific proof from the Marie Curie of cake.

On Common Grounds
8972 Beaver Valley Rd (Hwy 19)
Chimacum, WA 98325
360/732-4467

Elevated Ice Cream

Elevated Ice Cream

62¢/oz.

Established in 1977, the Elevated Ice Cream parlor on Port Townsend's main drag is a long-standing local institution that became a "destination parlor" more recently, when the Travel Channel voted it one of the best in the country.

Elevated's ice creams are made on the premises at least twice a week, using a base mixture manufactured to their specifications in Snoqualmie. Elevated products aren't organic, but they are made with the highest quality ingredients and RBST-free milk, and they're currently working on new recipes free from corn-based sweeteners. The ice creams are 12% butterfat--satisfying but not stupefying--and the non-dairy Italian ices are low- or non-fat.

After sampling an embarrassing number of Elevated's innovative flavors, I ordered apricot and cardamon ice creams and chocolate Italian ice; all were great, but the spicy-warm cardamon was a standout. Another Elevated innovation is selling by weight rather than by the scoop (no more silent prayers for a heavy-handed scooper!). According to the list of average weights and prices for small, medium, and large cups my "medium" cup was on the small side, but I was consoled by the thought that I hadn't paid for more than I'd gotten.

Elevated Ice Cream

627-631 Water Street

Port Townsend, WA 98368

360/385-1156