Sweet Fusion

surprising flavours finding happiness together in a cookie

We’re getting in the spirit of Halloween this weekend and have baked up some delectably scary treats…ghosts, bats, and jack o’ lanterns!

If you find these guys a little too creepy, you can always opt for a fun and friendly pink elephant!

This is also the last day of the regular season of the Carp Farmers’ Market. However, we will be back on December 7 & 8 for the fantastic Christmas Market. We’ll have our usual cookies as well as some holiday-themed treats!

• a chocolate overload box,
• an old-fashioned favourites box, and
• a fantastic fusion box.

Thanks to everyone who came out (rain or shine) and supported us this season! We’ll see you in December…

Not long ago, good friends of mine were married. Stumped with what to get them as a wedding gift I decided at least part of their gift must be creative. So I took to creating a new cookie, inspired by two good friends and their love for each other.
The result…

...a lemon-ginger cookie, drizzled with dark chocolate.

We got the thumbs up from the newlyweds – apparently a match made in heaven.

Our other cookie has been a long time in the making… Ever since the garlic festival at the Carp Farmers’ Market, we wondered if chocolate and garlic could find happiness together in a cookie. Could chocolate hold its own against such an aggressive flavour?

Our market neighbour, Salty Don provided us with a tin of his fantastic Tuscan Smoked Sea Salt, blended with among other things our key ingredient – garlic.

After searching through recipe books and magazines we found what looked like a good recipe and completely changed it to incorporate our smokey garlic, a hint of cinnamon and lots of dark chocolate.

With a couple trials and taste tests under our belts, we have our Tuscan Chocolate Cookie: a slightly chewy, fabulously chocolatey cookie that releases smoked garlic and rosemary flavours in pleasing waves.

This Saturday (September 15) we’ll have both of our cookies for sale at the Carp Farmers’ Market. We hope you’ll drop by and let us know what you think of the new creations!

I took one of those online personality quizzes for kicks today – The Which Lolcat Are You? Test. My friend had just discovered she was a ‘Lion Warning Cat’ and so we were intrigued to find out what funny cat I would translate into.

Well, here’s the picture that goes along with my new profile of ‘Sad Cookie Cat’:

And my personality summed up:

You are the classic Shakespearian tragedy of the lolcat universe. The sad story of a baking a cookie, succumbing to gluttony, and in turn consuming the very cookie that was to be offered. Bad grammar ensues.

I have to admit my eyes widened a bit at reading that – how’d they get it so accurate? I would give this a bit more thought, but I’m getting distracted by a plate of meringues…

p.s. it’s the Teddy Bear clinic at the Market this week, so in honour of all the bears we’re baking up batches of bear-shaped cookies!

It was high time we glammed up our booth at the Carp Farmers’ Market, so this week was craft week…
Armed with scissors, glue, paper, and this crazy coloured foam that surely wasn’t around when I was a kid – we created and crafted a polka-dotty Sweet Fusion sign and a matching poster.

The bright colours seemed to draw the crowds towards us and once they saw our cookies they couldn’t help themselves ;)

And let’s not forget what an important weekend this is…Happy Birthday Canada!! July 1st in Ottawa is this absolute best place to be and we helped everyone kick off the weekend by making some very patriotic cookies: fancy decorated Canada flags, butter cookies flavoured with real Maple syrup and maple leaf sugar cookies!

...Lemon Cardamom men that is!

We’ve baked and baked, and wrapped and labelled and now have one hundred cookie men waiting very patiently to be assigned a ‘Dad’. The first 100 dads who show up at the Carp Market this Saturday will each get a very tasty, and appropriately dad-like treat, courtesy of Sweet Fusion.

It also seems that we didn’t manage to keep our promise of introducing one new flavour a month. I’m not sure what came over us, but we have a second new flavour this month: Earl Grey-Vanilla Bean cookies!

Yup, that’s right – both fragrant tea leaves and real vanilla seeds have found their way into these tempting little morsels.

We’re looking forward to the weekend – Saturday is supposed to be hot and sunny, perfect for spending some time at a farmers’ market (hint hint). Hope to see you there!

As promised, we’re trying to bring a new cookie each month to the Carp Farmers’ Market. This week we decided to make the crispy, yet somehow chewy, Chocolate Kisses.

From the beginning to the end it’s an extremely satisfying process. First we start by slowly melting butter and bittersweet chocolate into a glorious smooth liquid.

Toss in a few ingredients, pop in the oven and tada…piles and piles of chocolately goodness.

Don’t forget to pick yours up at the market on Saturday morning!

We were much more prepared for our second day at the Carp Farmers’ Market. Despite the promise of better weather, I refused to take any chances and wore a winter jacket and hat. I’m sure my odd outfit drew a few chuckles, but I was happy to be warm and toasty…

The crowds were a little thinner as no doubt many people chose to spend the first long weekend of the summer at their cottages, but we still made some good sales and had a couple people return from the week before. We also started to look ahead to new cookies and hope to start introducing a cookie of the month as we experiment with new flavours!

Our highlight of the day was when one of the organizers of the market approached us about the Fathers’ Day weekend and asked if we’d be able to make some cookies to give out to the dads. For Mother’s Day the first 100 moms to come by were each given a rose so we had to try and top that. Our answer: Lemon-Cardamom cookies in the shape of giant men! That’s right – the first 100 lucky dads to come by on June 16 will get a tasty treat courtesy of Sweet Fusion.

We had our first day at the Carp Farmers’ Market last Saturday and all in all it was a great success.

Last minute nerves had us wondering if anyone would buy our cookies, and the freezing cold weather (it was about 6C when we showed up at 7:30am) had us wondering if anyone would come out.

Slowly but surely people arrived at the market, many (wisely) clad in their winter coats and mitts. Soon enough they found the Sweet Fusion nook and with a few taste samples passed around we had some very happy customers.

We’re looking forward to our second day and hopefully one of us will remember to bring a camera and we can post some photos next week!