Halloween 2011, Treat Edition: Raincoast Cookies giveaway
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Karen Hamilton
October 31, 2011
This should be a familiar sight for those of you that tour the wine-and-cheese circuit:
Lesley Stowe’s Raincoast Crisps have been gracing the tables of me and mine for years. I don’t know how to explain how they became so ubiquitous in our social circle; it just isn’t a party without ‘em. In fact, I feel kind of bad for the marketing machine behind Lesley Stowe Fine Foods. Because these crisps have achieved Kleenex and Q-Tip status in our household, I never even thought to mention to you that this is a local and delicious product to get behind…I just assumed you already knew.
So when I got the invite, like other local food lovers did, to sample a new product in Lesley’s own residential kitchen, I was conflicted. How could I ever forgive myself if my in-person taste test of the new line made Lesley Stowe cry in her own home? How could something possibly top these crisps that I adore so much?
Thankfully, I wound up having other commitments that night and was mailed a sample to try in the privacy and pressure-free environment of my dining room. If I didn’t like them, you wouldn’t hear from me. If I did, well…I’d give some away to you on Halloween.
A fellow Foodist aptly described the Raincoast Cookie:
They fill the gap between a cookie and a power bar.
I couldn’t agree more. The snack, each about the size of the palm of your hand, is vacuum sealed to remain moist, chewy, and dense–likely from the inclusion of dried fruit, chopped nuts, flax seed, and oatmeal. Didn’t spot a speck of white flour anywhere.
Our family preferred the Dark Chocolate, Tart Cherry, & Pecan cookie pictured above. My toddler, upon being given free reign to rip open any of the samples we received, immediately zeroed in on the large chunks of chocolate peeping through the window packaging, and refused to share her cookie with myself or my husband. We actually had to descend to smoke-and-mirror tactics to be able to sneak a nibble. And as I write this with a rumbly stomach in the middle of the afternoon slump, I’m awfully tempted to steal the remaining Dark Chocolate cookie from the giveaway package and make you spend the ~$3 to acquire it yourself at your local grocery.
Sample Raincoast Cookies at Urban Fare
Make sure you find your way downtown on November 4, 2011, because the Lesley Stowe team will be at two Urban Fare locations to offer you a taste of their newest creations.
Urban Fare Bute | 305 Bute Street
Noon to 2pm – Come down and sample all three flavours of Lesley Stowe’s Raincoast Cookies.
Urban Fare Alberni | 1133 Alberni Street
3:30pm to 5:30pm – The Lesley Stowe team will have samples of the classic Raincoast Crisps plus their newest addition, Raincoast Cookies.
Win a Lesley Stowe Trick or Treat bag from Tiny Bites
Our Halloween candy stash is helping to stave off my Raincoast Cookie cravings until the giveaway winner has it safely in hand. So, how does this contest work?
Study this picture carefully.
Now come on over to our lovely Facebook page and try to decipher my algorithm for eating a package of Smarties. I’ll keep dropping hints there: one every few hours until someone cracks it. The winner, selected by Wednesday at the latest, will get a goody bag containing the remaining cookie samples we got from Lesley Stowe plus a couple of my favourite Raincoast Crisps packages that I picked up for you this weekend.
In the bag:
- Raincoast Cookie: Dark Chocolate, Tart Cherry, & Pecan (family favourite)
- Raincoast Cookie: Apricot, Ginger, & Slivered Almond (my #2)
- Raincoast Cookie: Dried Cranberry & Toasted Hazelnut (Kurt’s #2)
- Cranberry Hazelnut Raincoast Crisps
- The Original Raincoast Crisp
Categories: Food, Food Purveyors, Yummy Products
Halloween 2011, Trick Edition: Pumpkin and date hand pie party favours
Leave a Comment Karen HamiltonOctober 31, 2011
My birthday came and went this year without an explicitly planned Birthday Cake of Immortality (BCI). It was no real skin off my back to skip a year, as the 13-course Peking Duck banquet we threw at Red Star suited me just fine.
It was brought to my attention, however, that the party favours that we created for our 30 guests not only made Halloweentastic gourmet treats but met the standards for a Birthday Cake of Immortality (a metaphoric eating of flesh).
Now that you’re done looking at previous BCIs and have managed to push your nausea down, I’ll share our tricks for creating these less controversial, delicious, and seasonally appropriate hand pies filled with pumpkin and Medjool dates.
The Filling
Time to meander over to The Cooking Photographer. Laura’s recipe is the one that came up when I Googled “jack o’ lantern hand pie”, and after seeing her handiwork, no other hand pie would do for my guests.
Since I needed 4x the number of hand pies that Laura’s recipe made, I naturally made 4x the amount of filling that a single batch called for. Big mistake!
That’s all we needed per hand pie: a spoonful! One batch of filling was therefore more than enough to fill the 30 hand pies we made. It’s not too horrible if you make too much, though; stuff the remainder into a normal-sized pie and you’re all set.
The Dough
My well-tempered friend Eagranie Yuh came over last August and taught me her tried-and-true pie pastry technique, which she had, in turn, learned from Kate McDermott, Seattle baker extraordinaire.
To give both ladies their proper due, I will simply link to their respective articles. Click away!
- Kate on making a plain pie crust and how not to stick your hand in an oven (bonus: recipe source from 1898!)
- Eagranie’s treatise on using leaf lard in pie
These particular hand pies were commemorating a Peking Duck dinner so I veered slightly off-recipe, using a smidgen less of leaf lard and making up for it with a heaping tablespoon of duck fat.
Specialized Tools
Since Laura clearly described how to cut, fill, and bake the hand pies, I won’t bother reiterating the assembly instructions here. Instead, I’ll share a few tips that may save you time and ruined tester pies.
To get your pies looking like a right old jack o’ lantern, find your neighbourhood Williams Sonoma and get these babies:
We chose not to cut out a nose in our hand pies, as doing so would have left us little room around the edges to seal the sides of the pie together. Similarly, we opted for the mouths and eyes that balanced our desire to have the filling stick out with our need to keep the pies sealed.
I didn’t want to create a separate label in the party favour bag to say thank you, so spending $30 on this message cutter set just to be able to press “Thank You” on the back side of the pie was well worth it. Also rationalized that this set would come in handy for future occasions where I feel like writing graffiti on my desserts.
I thought they came out pretty well, don’t you?
About Tiny Bites
Tiny Bites is a food blog that explores all things edible and imbibable in Vancouver, British Columbia. More >
Articles by Karen Hamilton
Read the food and non-food articles that I've contributed to sites other than Tiny Bites.
