Brown & Haley's Mountain Bar

 

Mountain Bar

Brown and Haley, $1.25

Seattle's gritter neighbor to the south, Tacoma was long renowned for a distinctive "Tacoma aroma" produced by its many local industries.  But since the early twentieth century, at least one inner-city manufacturer has given locals a good reason to inhale deeply:  the Brown & Haley confectionery company.  

Starting their business in 1912, founders Harry Brown and JC Haley faced both challenges and opportunities similar to those faced by budding confectioners in 2008.  With the country on the brink of crisis, the demand for affordable luxuries rose steadily even as supply chains became increasingly unpredictable.  

Launched in 1915, the "Mount Tacoma Bar" became a particular favorite with the young soldiers training at nearby Camp Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis McChord).  A center of vanilla fondant layered with tempered chocolate and crushed peanuts, the confection was soon renamed the "Mountain Bar" as its popularity spread beyond the city limits.  A cherry version was added in the 1920s and a peanut butter one in 1974.  The female "dippers' who originally made each bar by hand (below left) were eventually replaced by machines capable of making 592 bars per minute.

Brown & Haley is still operating in downtown Tacoma, led by JC's granddaughter Anne Haley.  Although the factory floor is now closed to visitors, you can visit the outlet store (housed in a kiosk recycled from Seattle's 1968 World's Fair) for seconds, specials, and generous samples. 
 

Brown & Haley Factory Store
110 E 26th St 
Tacoma WA
253 / 620-3067

110 East 26th St, Tacoma, WA 98421(253) 620-3067

110 East 26th St, Tacoma, WA 98421(253) 620-3067

Jat Juk

Jat Juk

With every graphite-colored day that drags by I find myself grasping for new winter survival strategies.  Currently, I'm leaning on homemade pudding and awkward song parodies. 

This recipe for Korean jat juk, an intensely comforting pinenut-rice-date porridge, comes from Mark Reinfeld and Jennifer Murray's excellent "The 30 Minute Vegan's Taste of the East."  I added only this optional theme song, sung to the tune of Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City":

"Hot pudding!  Winter in the city!  Back of my spoon feelin' really cinnamon-y!"

Jat Juk

1/2c lightly toasted pine nuts 
1 1/2c water 
pinch of salt 
1/4 c brown rice flour 
3T agave or other sweetener 
4 finely chopped dates 
pinch of cinnamon 

Blend the nuts and 1c of water in a blender or processor until smooth; pour into saucepan and place over medium heat.  

Meanwhile, use a frying pan to dry fry the rice flour over medium-high heat for 3 minutes, stirring frequently; slowly add 1/2c of water, whisking for a smooth paste.  

Add the pine nut mix and salt to the rice mix; cook until it thickens, about 5 minutes, whisking well, then stir in the sweetener. 

Pour into serving bowls and top with chopped dates and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

"Hot pudding!"

Egyptian Date Cake

Egyptian Date Cake

Spellchecker may object to my saying so, but many traditional Egyptian sweets are what you might call desert desserts, based in large part on sweet crops like apricots, grapes, and dates that thrive along the damp margins of the Nile in what is otherwise a hot and arid environment.

In their A World of Recipes: Egypt, Sue Townsend and Caroline Young give this recipe for a spongy, spicy Egyptian date cake:

11oz/325g fresh dates, pits removed
5oz/150g blanched almonds
4oz/100g soft brown sugar
1 orange, washed
4 eggs¼ c superfine granulated sugar
½ t ground cardamom
1 ½ oz/40g butter
3T cornstarch
1t confectioners sugar

Butter a a 9” springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a food processor, blend the almonds and brown sugar until coarsely chopped; add the dates and blend until finely chopped, but not ground.

Grate the orange rind, then squeeze one half of the orange.

Separate the eggs and whisk the whites into soft peaks.

Beat the yolks with the granulated sugar and cardamom; add the date mixure, orange rind, 1T of the orange juice, and the cornstarch.

Gently fold the egg whites into the date mixture.

Spoon the batter into the pan and bake 35-45 minute at 400/200 degrees until the cake springs back with pressed.

Dust with confectioners sugar before serving.

Buttermilk Pie

  
Mini Buttermilk Pie
Emerald City Fish and Chips, $2

At Emerald City Fish and Chips, the emphasis on Southern style and family recipes extends from the entrees to the desserts.  An in-law bakes the four-bite mini pies, filled with either sweet potato or a rich, sweet, golden custard that the name "buttermilk" doesn't quite do justice to.

Emerald City Fish and Chips
3756 Rainier Ave S
Seattle WA
206 / 760-3474

Cherimoya

Cherimoya
Various groceries, from $4.99/lb

Google "cherimoya" and you'll inevitably lean that this tropical fruit was hailed by Mark Twain as "deliciousness itself."  (It's curious that an early American writer would dominate an such an indirect internet search.  Is it because he hit the nail on the head?  Or because in the 150 years since his pronouncement, no one has been quite so effusive?)

Originating in either Central or South America, cherimoya shrubs are now grown around the world, particularly in the southern parts of Asia, California, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  The fruit's strikingly bumpy skin is aptly characterized by Wikipedia as "'slightly tubercular," but it's the tendency of its pale flesh to turn creamy when fully ripe that earned cherimoya the English name "custard apple."  Flavor notes vary among varietals, but descriptions commonly refer to a combination of other fruits, especially banana and pineapple, leading the first time taster to expect an all-in-one tropical fruit salad.  Whether those expectations are met hinges on factors including how far the fruit has had to travel and how well it was treated along the way. 

Pie in a Bowl

 

Pie in a Bowl

Skillet, $6

Acknowledging that baking pie filling inside a pie shell isn't always worth the risk, Skillet takes a surer route to satisfaction by cooking the components separately.  Not until you place an order for "pie in a bowl" do the tender chocolate pudding and shards of perfectly cooked crust come together in the eponymous bowl, where their sweetness is balanced out by a smattering of sea salt and bitter cocoa nibs. 

Nab Vam

Nab Vam 
Seattle Center's Hmong New Year, $2

Food is a big component of Hmong New Year or Xyoo Tshiah, the only major holiday observed throughout the Hmong diaspora.  There's pork in several formats, there's a spicy salad of pounded green papaya, there's the chewy confection ncuav, a mochi cousin made from pounded sticky rice.

And there's nab vam, a dessert-drink hybrid so colorful it rivals the appliqued costumes worn by many of the young celebrants.  Although nab vam is often translated as "three color dessert," the variety of textures in each cup is at least as important and often more numerous.  As Sami Scripter and Sheng Vang explain in their excellent Hmong cookbook, Cooking from the Heart, "Westerners are  used to solid and liquid food being separate.  That is not so for the Hmong (and Asians in general), who delight in a variety of slippery, crunchy, chewy, and watery sensations all happening in the same dish.”

Nab vam's textural delights usually include crunchy crushed ice, runny caramel syrup, unctuous coconut cream, slippery strings of rice flour jelly, and bubbly balls of "frog egg" tapioca.  Extras might include crisp water chestnuts, soft-cooked beans, or juicy bits of chopped fruit.  How popular is it?  Scripter and Vang's standard recipe makes 40 servings.    

Pudding Shots

Pudding Shot
The Brick, $2

If you ever watched "Northern Exposure," you're familiar with the Brick Saloon, a warm but no-nonsense watering hole where--to mix sitcoms--everyone knows your name, and how you like your burger.  

Far from being a hollow facade figment of a set designer's imagination, the Brick is a real and venerable place, the oldest continuously operating bar in Washington state.  Opened in 1889, it was rebuilt in 1898, and renamed in honor of the 45,000 bricks used in the facade.   I didn't get either the bricks or the basement jail cell in the above picture, but you can see two of the bar's other famous features:  a wood bar imported from England via Cape Horn more than a century ago, and between the bar and the stools, a 23' brass-lined trough spittoon, though which water still flows today. 

In the foreground, a more recent feature of the Brick's menu:  a pudding shot.  Like jell-o shots, they're made by mixing up instant pudding with alcohol instead of water.   The seasonal flavor:  candy corn.  Holling might not approve, but Shelley certainly would. 

The Brick Saloon
100 W Pennsylvania Ave.
Roslyn WA
509/649-2643

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

Little Bake Shop

Pear Tart

Little Bake Shop, Johnson Orchards 

Alfred Johnson emigrated from Sweden in 1889 and was eventually lured to central Washington by a railroad initiative offering free transportation to prospective buyers of rail-owned land in the Yakima Valley.  In 1904 Johnson and his brothers founded their orchard on 60 acres of irrigated valley floor.  In the early years, much of the orchard's produce was packed into barrels and shipped to Sweden via Seattle, but as the area's population grew, more and more of the fruit was consumed locally.    

Now surrounded by sprawling subdivisions, Johnson Orchards continues to operate under a banner of continuity ("Same Family, Same Location - Quality Fruit since 1904") but a few things have certainly changed.  The orchard now offers cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, apples, and pluots, some available through a u-pick program, others sold by the pound, box, or bin in a refurbished 1916 fruit packing warehouse.  In 2011, the family added a commercial kitchen, where they bake cakes, bars, and pies during the growing season, selling them from "Little Bake Shop" cases inside the warehouse--on Fridays and Saturdays only.   

Johnson Orchards

4906 Summitview Avenue

Yakima WA

509/966-7479 

 

Roslyn Candy Co.

 
















Bite-sized truffles
Rosyln Candy Co., $1 each

Relative to its size, tiny Roslyn WA is packed with attractions.  It still has many of the buildings familiar from the TV show "Northern Exposure," but also surprises like a fascinatingly multi-cultural cemetery (in the heyday of mining workers were recruited from all over the world) and budding businesses like the Roslyn Candy Co.

From a colorful little house in the heart of downtown, Roslyn Candy dispenses ice cream, retro candy by the pound, and chocolate truffles and treats created by owners Alesha Schmedeke and Otto Cate.  The confectionery lineup features both revived classics (Italian-style hazlenut-and-chocolate gianduja creams) and contemporary crazes (chocolate-dipped local bacon from Owens Meats), as well as an assortment of bite-sized truffles (above) ranging from the 80% dark chocolate "Kumabo" to a fennel-infused white chocolate ganache coated in white chocolate and topped with colorful candied Indian fennel seeds. 

Roslyn Candy Co. 
104 1/2 Pennsylvania Ave
Roslyn WA
509/649-3390

Mom's European Food & Deli

Russian Mini Chocolate Bars
Mom's European Food & Deli, $6.99/lb

Soap Lake is a tiny town in central Washington built around a lake long famed for the healing properties of its foamy waters and slimy mud.  Modern environmental factors have put a dent in those powers--and in the number of tourists visiting the town's spas and resorts.  From the car I saw two going-out-of-business sales, several vacant storefronts, and the empty lot where town boosters had once planned to erect the world's largest lava lamp.

There was no one else in sight when I parked by the public swimming area just a block from downtown, rolled up my pants, and waded into the shallow, slightly effervescent water.  There was no one in sight as I stood ankle-deep in mud, creamy and insubstantial as Cool Whip, and wondered what it would be like to live here. 

I was starting to get a little spooked when a stroll down main street finally filled in a few of the blanks.   As I passed a strikingly well-stocked yarn store, there was a flurry of activity; car after car pulled up and a dozen chatty women got out carrying snacks and projects for the weekly "stitch and bitch."  

At the other end of the street, I found Mom's European Deli, a strikingly well-stocked emporium of foods from Russia and the Baltic region--deli staples like meat, cheese, and specialty breads, but also row upon row of sweet snacks.  The dozens of individually wrapped hard candies, caramels, and nutty little dark chocolate bars  (like Clumsy Bear, Nut Cluster, Kara Kym, above) are sold pick-and-mix style by the pound, as is sesame and sunflower halva, cut to order from huge marbled blocks.  There are also sweet drinks, boxed cookies, and bags of confections like zephir, a pastel hybrid of marshmallow and divinity.   The cold case is stocked with fresh cakes from Russian bakeries on the east coast, carried back by long-haul truck drivers returning from a New York run.  

The beach may no longer be bustling, but an unexpected bounty of beautiful yarn and Russian treats prove that there's still life, creativity, community, and celebration behind Soap Lake's hard-luck facade.   

Mom's European Food & Deli
331 Main Ave E
Soap Lake WA
509/246-1121

Hrustule

Hrustule
Seattle Center's CroatiaFest 

Crackly, deep-fried hrustule cookies are a Croatian favorite, popular at Christmas and other happy occasions.  The cookies are simple strips or twists of thin dough, which, depending on the family, may be flavored with combinations of vanilla, rum, whiskey, anise, orange, or lemon. 

 

But although hrustule are simple to make, they are time-consuming and labor intensive.  For Seattle Center's CroatiaFest, members of the Martinis family demonstrated skills honed over many years of working together to make huge batches of holiday hrustule.  

First the cousins demonstrated blending the dough in a standing mixer, adding flour a little at a time until just the right texture is achieved, then rolling it so thin that the pattern of the tablecloth underneath shows through.  They used a serrated pastry wheel to cut the dough into strips, and before dropping the strips in hot oil, gave each strip a gentle stretch to make a little thinner--and so a little crisper.  Out of the fryer, the cookies are drained on paper tools, then sprinkled with powdered sugar once cool. 

 

Other booths sold fresh palacinke (Croatian crepes), and slices of povitica, a sweet bread swirled with nuts, cinnamon, and chocolate. 

Colt's Bolts

Colt's Bolts
Nashville Airport, $1.99

On the one hand, a Colt's Bolt is a dressed-up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup; on the other, it's a country song wrapped in foil.  

On the label of each confection is a 1980's glamor shot of blonde in a red power suit, company owner Mackenzie Colt.  A teenage wife and mother with talent and ambition, Colt was a regular at open mic nights at the Ramada Inn lounge near her St. Louis home, where she was discovered by Buck Owens.  After touring as Owens' protege, she moved to Nashville for a six-season stint as a scantily-clad "Hee Haw Honey." 

When she aged out of her Hee Haw role, Colt had a Plan C waiting in the wings:  a lifelong passion for baking and confectionery.  In 1984 she began to combine chocolate, peanut butter, and roasted almonds into candy cups she called Colt's Bolts.  At first she mixed all of the ingredients in her own Cuisinart and wrapped the finished cups in the foil left over from chocolate bars she melted down for her coating.  All that had to change after Colt's Bolts won the Fancy Food Show's Outstanding Confection Award and a Japanese distributor ordered 60,000 pieces. 

Pink Radio Cake

Pink Radio Cake
Fido, $4.25

A beet bonanza several years ago led Fido's pastry chef to experiment with using beet puree to add subtle flavor and not-so-subtle color to the coffeeshop's standard cake recipe.  The resulting "pink radio cake" is sort of a dialed-down red velvet:  cake moistened with buttermilk, oil, and vinegar and held together with cream cheese icing the color of a Barbie birthday party.  

Judging from other pictures I've seen online, some batches are definitely beetier than others, with one or more of the cake layers looking like a wedge of rouge.  Maybe it's a seasonal thing? 

Nostalgic old-Nashville aside:  I can so clearly remember the building's previous life as Jones' Pet Shop, where the puppies in their tiny cages were both adorable and pitiful, impossible not to look at.  

Fido 

1812 21st Ave S

Nashville TN
615/777-3436