Skip to main content

PRODUCT: Mark & Stephen's Jam from Big Sugar Bakeshop

I decided this year that a lot of my gifts to people would be food gifts I make myself. This way, I could practice my skills, do something I love, and give people gifts that are labors of love and consumable, so they don't sit around taking up space.

I have a few birthdays coming up rapidly this month, and I had decided to make some marmalade. Well ... that didn't go so well. First of all, I had problems finding everything I needed for canning that would also work with my budget and kitchen space and existing cookware. Then, I decided to use a recipe for lemon lime marmalade from The Joy of Cooking. But it was this strange recipe where it started out giving a few instructions, and then directed you to another recipe for the rest of the procedure. But I think somewhere in trying to pull off that switcheroo I missed something or got confused because the marmalade just didn't jel very well. Basically, I ended up with a thick lemon-lime syrup and which I also thought was too sweet. Maybe it could have been okay for cocktails or something, but I didn't really want to subject anyone to it. So I decided instead to do the next best thing, which is purchase some locally handcrafted jam and support some small local artisans.

I had read that Big Sugar Bakeshop, which opened not too long ago on Ventura Blvd., near where I work, had a small gift selection too, and in the pictures on their website I caught a glimpse of jam. So I went over on my lunch break and picked up a few jars of Mark & Stephen's jam. Mark and Stephen are from Culver City and according to their label, Stephen scours the farmer's market seeking out the best fruit and ingredients and Mark prepares the jam. The ingredients list is refreshingly simple, just fruit, cane sugar, lemon juice and pectin. They also make vinaigrettes and mustards, and prices range from $5.75 to $8.50.

I might have also purchased some cupcakes. The red velvet cupcake had such a cute heart on it, how could I leave it behind? The cupcakes, by the way, were delicious. They tasted like real cupcakes, like you would have at someone's birthday party, not like the dense sugarbomb monstrosities that seem to be the thing at all the specialty cupcake shops everywhere. The frosting is very light, which I love, since I can't stomach most of the cupcakes around because of the big hard plops of frosting on top. Cupcakes are $2.25 apiece. Not exactly cheap, but not as expensive as some of the trendy stores.

I highly recommend, next time you need to do some gift shopping, to do it here. They have a variety of gourmet food gifts as well as some cute tchotchkes and cards and things as well. And cupcakes and cookies and "doughnut muffins." I don't even want to know.

Big Sugar Bakeshop
12182 Ventura Blvd.
Studio City

Comments

2nd-favorite said…
Something about pots of jam as gifts always reminds me of the movie Six Degrees of Separation. And the making of jam of my mother, who always had cupboards filled with mason jars and plenty of pectin on hand. Nice post.
11:48 AM
Chubbypanda said…
Tag, you're it! Meme time!
8:02 PM
Anyanka said…
We got a few cupcakes and doughnut muffins for tonight. They smell cinnamonny and look a bit...fried?

Prepare yourself.
1:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT: Ristorante Belvedere, Monterosso al Mare, Italy

We started off our second-to-last day in the Cinque Terre by taking the train to Vernazza for breakfast: There was supposed to be a market that day, but since the weather was threatening, there were only a few meager stalls, mostly selling non-food items. We had our breakfast and walked around the village a bit. Vernazza used to have a river flowing all the way through it, but now the river has been shunted underground at a certain point. If you walk to the top of town you can see it, along with some ducks and geese that hang out there to get fed by whoever comes along. J. and I then went to sit and have an espresso and wait for the train to Corniglia, the only town we hadn't yet visited. Corniglia is home to the local nude beach (which we skipped) and is the highest of the towns, elevation-wise. We had to walk up a buttload of steps to get there. Look at me go: That's actually me going down (a lot faster than I came up), but I did come up them as well. There is a bus that ta...
7 comments
Read more

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I've been evaluating my blog and have realized that, while I have lots of nifty posts, I don't really have a good overall explanation of what exactly this blog is all about, and what one can expect to find here. So I'm creating this post and will link to it in the sidebar for anyone who's interested. I am not a professional chef. I have not been cooking for years. I am not an expert who is going to make beautiful and amazing and complicated dishes to "wow" you. I am, in fact, quite the opposite. I am a total beginner. I've always lived in places with miniscule kitchens and concerned myself with schoolwork and studying and working and not paid the least bit of attention to what I was eating every day. And that's what this blog is all about. It's about me learning where my food comes from, how to make it properly, and how to enjoy it to the utmost. It's no fun to learn by myself, so I started the blog to keep track of what I learn, kind of like a...
8 comments
Read more

INFO+RECIPE: Isaac Brock: Rock Musician, Chef

MODEST MOUSE Modest Mouse is not my favorite band. It is one of those bands that everyone around me loves and I am overwhelmingly indifferent to. I can think of one song of theirs that I like. I saw them live one time and came away with the impression that I like the music, the vocals just leave a lot to be desired. That vocalist is Isaac Brock. Isaac Brock has never come off as a nice person to me, when reading his interviews about music. I'd basically written him off as a bad vocalist, and arrogant twat. Then, I read an interview with him in the Believer . The interview was not about music, it was about food, and cooking. And I was shocked. It was like I was reading about a whole different person. A person I liked and wanted to know. A person like me. I discovered that he was born a mere two days before me. If astrology has anything to say about it, then he probably IS a person like me. Not quite the same ... that two days mak...
4 comments
Read more