For the Love of Taste

Baking with local cake masters

STORY BY MASON CHEUNG

Andi Vann, owner of Pure Bliss Desserts in downtown Bellingham is concocting a top-secret dessert in the kitchen of her shop. After completing three versions of the same cake, Vann tastes each of them to see if she has reached her final product. She is close, but concludes aspects of two need to be merged. When she knows the cake is done, it can be presented in the glass case amongst her other decadent creations from dense New York cheesecakes to a cake best defined by its name, the Chocolate Bliss.

Understanding how to balance tastes is the key to making sure food is not too much of something, like salty or sweet, but just right. For Vann, finding that balance, through her passion for sugary sweets, has led her to create some of the most well known treats in Bellingham.

Sugary sweetness is usually the first thing that comes to mind when people think about dessert, Vann says. For her, it is more about finding the balance among complimentary ingredients to work harmoniously to emphasize the main one, like the rich flavors of pumpkin or chocolate.

Vann and Katie Swanson of Katie’s Cupcakes say finding the balance takes time, a lot of trial and error, and experience from working in the kitchen for hours.

“Not being intimidated by making mistakes is a really big deal,” Vann says.

IT’S ALL IN THE TASTE

All food has a taste, whether it’s sweet, salty, bitter, sour or the Japanese word for savory, umami.

Contrary to popular belief, flavor and taste are different, but both play roles in how taste is balanced. Flavor involves the interaction between different senses to create new experiences with food, according to an article by WebMD’s Heather Hatfield. For example, strawberry is a flavor while sweet is a taste.

But even if the perfect balance of taste is concocted, it will not matter if bad tasting ingredients go into the dish. Gigi Berardi, professor of ecogastronomy at Western, says to create good food, the ingredients must be good to eat, clean on the environment and humanely treats animals, and fair in its treatment of laborers, Berardi says.

“The pleasure in food comes from taking the time to savor what we have in front of us,” Berardi says of taste and the experience of eating.

In terms of human’s attraction to tastes and flavors, we associate our experiences from our past with certain tastes, Berardi says. But with sweets, those experiences go farther back than we can remember with fluids in the amniotic sack containing sugar, Berardi says.

GOOD LOOKS, BAD TASTE

As young girl, Vann would pull herself up and onto the kitchen counter to watch her mother prepare dinner. Throwing a variety of salt, pepper, and spices into the food, doing what felt right and tasted great was the only recipe her mother followed.

While Vann has had no professional schooling in culinary arts, she learned the freedom of working in the kitchen from her mother, and applies that today in how she balances tastes in her baking.

Vann found the best way to balance flavors was to use the fresh, flavorful and local ingredients from around Whatcom County. Whether it’s highlighting the delicious berries of the summer or the ripe pumpkins of fall, the flavors she finds nearby are more flavorful than at supermarkets.

“I love a really good dessert. I love really good food and I don’t feel like it’s really complicated to get to that point,” Vann says. “But I also know that everyone has a different palate and a different desire for things.”

Knowing where the food comes from is important, Berardi says. Berardi says good food must come from good producers.

It is not uncommon for Berardi to go to the Community Food Co-op and break off a piece of a carrot, she says. Based on how sweet the carrot is, it tells her whether the retailers tasted the food, which she argues is their responsibility.

While local is often more fresh, it should still taste good. Growers and food educators should have the responsibility to train people’s taste buds to appreciate what a standard for local food should taste like, Berardi says.

Berardi refers to this as, “True Blue vs. Global Green, or global organic.” This raises the question of whether non-certified organic food can still taste good. Berardi says it can, but does not have to be, because farmers must be responsive to consumer demands and if no one is buying bad-tasting food then a producer should change that.

“If the food is sold at a premium, then it darn well better be good, clean and fair,” Berardi says. “Isn’t that what you’re paying the premium for?”

Carl Weston, owner of Joe’s Garden, says the quality of their food comes from the ground. Having balanced nutrients in the soil where he plants seeds is the main factor in how Weston ensures his produce will taste good every season, he says.

Taste matters more than good looks when it comes to the food Weston grows. Years ago, Weston says red delicious apples were the number one apple. But when the demand for the apples to look the perfect shade of red and be the perfect size grew, development began and taste suffered, he says. Weston stopped buying red delicious apples for years, until recently when the market came back and began producing these apples the way they were meant to be.

However, knowing whether the soil is nutrient rich and balanced is not always easy. With scientific development, Weston has been able to test every 50 feet of soil in the garden so he knows which areas need certain nutrients to help maintain healthy plants, which will then produce delicious foods.

THE QUEST FOR CREATIVITY

Neal and Katie Swanson, co-owners of Katie’s Cupcakes, agree people like chocolate and vanilla. Anything else is hard to sell, Neal says. And they have tried.

“There’s room to be more creative in combining different flavors,” Katie says about her creations. A recent one was a chocolate cupcake made with cola and a layer of fluffy chocolate fudge on top with crumbled potato chips to evoke a sweet and salty decadence with a drizzle of caramel.

But when the time came to sell, nobody bought the creative cupcakes, Katie says.

“I’m kind of just doing that for myself, and sometimes that feels like a waste of time,” she says.

In June 2012, the Swanson’s partnered with Fairhaven’s Rustic Coffee and Wine Bar for an evening of savory cupcakes and delicious wines. While guests enjoyed the habanero corn bread cupcake with mashed potatoes piped on top and a push pastry with brie, apricot jam and bacon, few purchased the creations.

For Neal, this is the most surprising thing about their industry. Even a New York hotspot, where the couple gained inspiration to open a cupcake shop, was not venturing into flavors outside the public’s cupcake comfort zone.

However, the Swansons say their best-selling cupcake is the sweet and savory balance of bacon and maple with a sour cream frosting on top.

When it comes to the finding a recipe that tastes good, both Vann and the Swansons agree, patience is key. For Vann’s top-secret cake, she says finding the perfect balance is a challenge, but it’s her passion for crafting delicious treats for others to enjoy that drives her and makes the resounding “Mmm,” more delicious.