Remember the days of bake sales and school birthdays?
Where moms would scramble to make cookies, brownies or often cupcakes? Cupcakes were often created with the help of Betty Crocker and little jars of coloured sugar sprinkles.
There was nothing decadent or trendy about the cupcakes of my childhood, but things have sure changed for the humble cupcake.
Nelson has even become the home of a boutique-style cupcake shop, Lucky Cupcakes, but the mighty cupcake trend has been captivating foodies and sugar addicts alike for some time. There is even a TV show on the W Network — Cupcake Girls — about the women who own Cupcakes, a store chain in Vancouver.
As a foodie, I’ve become accustomed to following food trends. Just like clothing, music, interior design and many other topics, there are trends when it comes to food. I don’t know how these trends develop, but no matter how it happens, it has a way of captivating us and for some time, draws us in.
I lived around the corner from a Cupcakes location in Vancouver for a number of years. My lovely friend turned me on to them early on in our friendship. The cupcakes kind of became a symbol of certain events of my life in Vancouver. There were celebration cupcakes for birthdays, new jobs and promotions, and there were also pick-me up cupcakes often used as a cure-all for a broken heart.
As people started to catch on to the cupcake craze, competition sprung up around the city, and with new locations came new spins on the old favourite.
Before I made my move to the Kootenays, I was working as a baker’s assistant for a catering company in Vancouver. When I wasn’t working I would hang out with my employed journalist friends and bounce ideas for business plans off them. The most popular was my idea for a gourmet doughnut shop.
I got the idea after driving around the US with some friends one summer. Our first stop, on what became a bit of a doughnut pilgrimage, was Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon where I had a maple bacon bar (yep, bacon in a doughnut) and the next day a Lemon Chiffon crueller.
By the time I got to San Francisco I was ready for another doughnut, and we discovered Dynamo Donuts. I’m not going to lie, I could have set up shop there. They could have created a bed for me near the flour and I could have lived there happily forever. Dynamo takes doughnuts to the next level, and after my maple bacon experience in Portland, I was excited to see a maple-bacon-apple doughnut on the menu at Dynamo.
What I loved about their doughnuts is that they took flavours that we all know and love and a sweet treat we have grown up with, and reinvented it. I think that’s kind of what food trends are all about: taking things we know, cupcakes or doughnuts, and morphing them into something new that we hadn’t thought about before.
Another food trend slowly catching on in Canada is around the use of offal. When I explain to you what offal is, you may feel a bit awful, but it’s actually a very sustainable way of eating that many cultures around the world have used for centuries. Offal is basically all the nasty bits we often discard or use for dog food. It’s liver, kidneys, brains, stomach, hearts (are you feeling awful yet?).
Before I heard of offal and the trend of nose-to-tail eating, I felt pretty grossed out by the thought of eating sweet breads (glands) or tripe (stomach). But one day I was watching Anthony Bourdain (celebrity chef, food writer, travel writer and TV show host) who said basically that any trained monkey can cook a steak or a chicken breast, but it takes a true chef to make brains taste good.
Now, I bet you’re thinking, that all sounds nice, but has she done it? And the answer is yes. When I was in Vancouver, I began to seek out a nose-to-tail dinner. I found one being hosted at a restaurant called Refuel and quickly made reservations and happily paid the steep price for the experience.
I think the biggest challenge when eating offal is to convince yourself that it isn’t as disgusting as we in North American have become convinced that it is. It’s a real test of mental strength. The meal included house cured charcuterie, blood sausage, confit pig’s head and for dessert apple bacon tartlets. It was a challenge when I saw the two pigs’ heads coming towards me on a wood plank but I decided to try everything they put in front of me, and discovered pig’s head actually isn’t that bad.
Even though some food trends, like offal, aren’t going to be popular with everyone, there are a lot like cupcakes, doughnuts and even microbrew beer in adventurous flavours (Phillips Brewery’s Blueberry IPA) that may convert even the most unsuspecting eater into a foodie.
Star reporter and food columnist Megan Cole can be reached at reporter@nelsonstar.com