
The Sweet Smell of Victory
If you a) have a sweet tooth and b) are indecisive, do your homework. Study the menu, consult your taste buds. The lines are long enough; no one will thank you for dawdling. Small Victory was launched 2014 in Yaletown by Qasim Nathoo, soon after he graduated from business school.

Gabriola Apple Cider
1000 dwarf trees, 25 types of apples, Pacific Ocean breeze, and a long history of island craftmanship. It’s with these core ingredients that Ravenskill Orchards is carrying on a decades old tradition of creating small batch premium cider on Gabriola Island. In 2002, Keith and Marti MacKenzie started their heritage

Chef Lew’s Enchanted Forest Tea
As tea fanatics, we’re always looking for new and exciting ways to get our fix. Add some sweets and we’re scraping at the door. How exciting, then, to see the incredibly creative Enchanted Forest Tea that Chef William Lew is serving at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver until November 18th. We

Mermaids, Love Potion and Queen Cake
Gustav Von Mink is a busy man. He is ever thinking of new ways to feature his small batch chocolate: with kentucky bourbon and fresh mint in chocolate ganache, over bacon in hand speckled eggs, sparkling with mermaid-approved sea salt. Or how about some milk chocolate ketzels rolled through caramelized

Julia Alvarez’s Bad Ginger Cookies
‘After Mom’s death,’ author Julia Alvarez writes, ‘we found a box of ginger cookies in her freezer. I parceled them out, having one a week to make them last. Each time I took a bite and that spicy tingling filled my mouth, I thought of how – along with all

Coco Your Cakes
Countdown to one sweet launch. On August 14th, Lyndsay Sung – one of Vancouver’s hyper-creative baker bloggers – will see the release of her first cookbook: Coco Cake Land: Cute and Pretty Party Cakes to Bake and Decorate, published by Roost Books. ~ ~ Inside you’ll find photos of her

Elderflower Liqueur
Not all artists swoon over elderflowers. Shakespeare did call them ‘the stinking Elder.’ But to many, the little white flowers that precede the fat purple berry bunches smell heavenly. In Victorian floral messaging, the elderflower was said to represent compassion, kindness, humility or zealousness. 17th Century Dutch still-life painters often

Brush to Plate
Your task is to come up with a recipe inspired by the 1919 Manly MacDonald painting above. On your marks, get set, bake! What did you dream up? Canadian Chef Craig Flinn looked to the same Canadian War Museum painting for inspiration. “My mother owns an orchard in Port Williams,

Cookie Dough
The sweet-toothed among us know that the best part of baking is munching sugary ingredients. Back in the day, raw cookie dough was the thing – worth all manner of baker distraction and kitchen subterfuge. These days, what with all the free-floating salmonella horror stories, sneaking cookie dough doesn’t feel

A Day For Canoli
Happy Italian Day! On Sunday June 10th, from 12 to 8 pm, Vancouver will celebrate Italian Day on Commercial Drive, aka Little Italy. ~ ~ Just in time for Italian Day 2016, the City of Vancouver made it official. Commercial Drive – from 4 blocks north of 1st Avenue to