It started with cheesecakes. I don't remember why ... I suspect that I had been watching the flavors the bakery sold the most of and thought "well hell - that's alright, I guess, but what if we made X too ...". Knowing that my little bakery would never be allowed to alter the menu, even to make something BETTER, I decided to make cheesecakes for my own fun out of my home kitchen. I'd bring in my various offerings to work, and come holiday season, was surprised to get requests for them to be served at people's tables, for their "official" desserts. It wasn't long before I was also making flavored truffles.
Now there are food laws to be observed when you sell a home-made product, especially when you also have a business that's in the food industry - and heaven help you if you want to create an at-home business creating food. Doing so, in my county anyway, means my home kitchen would be available for inspection at any time, for any reason and I'm just too private of a person for that kind of invasion.
I needed to create a seperate identity, completely untied to the cafe/bakery. I also decided that I'd never really SELL these products. I'd accept an order, request the individual wanting the product buy the cream cheese, or cover the cost of the chocolate, and beyond that, it was good by me. For the truffles, knowing I'd never be able to charge what they actually cost me to make, I decided to make them "charity chocolates". Donate to your favorite charity, educate me about it (if you'd like), and here ya' go. This was back in the 80's.
"Frankly, My Dear ..." Cheesecakes & More was born and the name was part of a nod to NEVER cutting fat, or sugar, or chocoate, or butter. My slogan was "The perfect answer to any diet" (which was a response to the silent rest of the title ... "I don't give a damn"), which was my way of saying "the Triple-Chocolate cheesecake that I make has base of 3 pounds of cream cheese. If this is a problem for you, then don't eat it. I will not make a diet version."
FMD has been around, in some fashion or another, for two decades. There were years when I skipped truffles completely, and I haven't made a cheesecake for about 7 years now, but the jams are my constant. With my company closing for the July 4th week, it's well understood by those I work with that I will return with FMD Jams. My "sales guys" would bring in bagels - without my saying a word - because they KNEW that I'd supply the spread.
Some years are better than others. One year I made two cases of what could, at best, be described as really good apricot syrup ... and sometimes my strawberry is too chunky for real "spreading" onto toast (which is how I like it) but that's part of the whole "home made" charm, I suppose.
So here we go ... the official FMD 2008 Jam Update:
I will have strawberry (which by the way were all this gorgeous looking)
and apricot (I needed to hold one, so they wouldn't look like peaches)
And there will be tripleberry (my fave - a strawberry/blackberry/raspberry combo)
I realize that the raspberries were outstanding this year, but the costs are still too high to justify using them alone - they'll go father mixed with the other two berries. That being said ... just look at these guys!
So there ya' go. I'll be ready to ship by the end of this month and typically ask ya' let me use the "slow boat" shipping method, just to keep my costs down. I prefer getting two flavor requests at once, in case I can't come through on your "top" request. And, since these will be jars going out, I make no promises that there won't be breakage, but will re-ship if ya' just say so.
No comments:
Post a Comment