If you’re looking for a little something to sweeten up your week, here are three suggestions.
Cream cheese pound cake
Jeanne Dennis became a professional baker when a series of career setbacks helped her decide to turn her love of making pound cakes as gifts into a business named for St. Rita, a patron saint of impossible causes and other difficulties. Thirteen years after its founding, Atlanta-based Saint Rita’s Cakes offers Dennis’ original cream cheese pound cake and four additional regulars — blueberry, pumpkin, chocolate cream and chocolate chip — as well as occasional seasonal flavors. Each loaf cake comes double packaged, to ensure freshness, with the ribbon-bedecked white butcher paper outer wrap festive enough to present as a gift. The cream cheese pound cake is rich and moist, and our taste testers agreed it was the ultimate comfort dessert, as delicious on its own as it was with berries and whipped cream.
$25 per 1-pound cake. Available at Lucy’s Market, Floral Park Market, Cafe at Pharr, Fresh Harvest and stritascakes.com.
Credit: C. W. Cameron -- For the AJC
Credit: C. W. Cameron -- For the AJC
Nut brittles
In Fort Gaines, near the Georgia-Alabama state line, Darryl Chaney and his Brittle Brittle Bakeries crew make peanut, cashew and pecan brittles that are gaining attention. The pecan brittle was the winner in the confections category of this year’s University of Georgia Flavor of Georgia competition. Sampling it, we could understand why. The pecans are toasted, there’s just the right amount of salt, and the brittle itself is almost paper thin. This is buttery, nutty brittle that you can enjoy without worrying about your teeth. Chaney, a self-taught brittle maker, perfected his recipe during the pandemic and found a commercial kitchen where he could begin production. We had a preview taste of the sliced almond brittle that he’s working on, and we foresee another award-winning product.
$5 per 5-ounce bag of peanut brittle or 4.5-ounce bag of cashew or pecan brittle. Available at brittle.website.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Sweet and savory cookies
Open a bag of Nee’s butter cookies and you’ll find a tidy stack of 2-by-3-inch treats that bear the distinctive ridges that come from using a 1940s press. Nee’s Cookies owner Meredith Gifford learned to make the butter cookies from her mother-in-law, Patty (whose nickname was Nee), using a recipe that’s been in the Gifford family for more than 100 years. Now, Gifford makes five regular varieties — rosemary, fig and kalamata olive, lemon-poppy seed, herbes de provence and original butter cookies. She also makes occasional seasonal cookies, such as holiday spice and pumpkin butter.Stop by her booth at the Brookhaven Farmers Market and she’ll let you sample each one, if she hasn’t sold out already. The cookies all are made with organic ingredients, and the sweet and savory combinations make them as delicious with cheese on a charcuterie plate as they are with a glass of iced tea. We think you’ll have as hard a time choosing a favorite as we did.
$10 per 5.3-ounce bag. Available at the Brookhaven Farmers Market and neescookies.com.
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