Serendib Kitchen

(And speaking of shipping, hey, I just heard about PirateShip — do you use them? Do you love them? Tell me more.)

How much do I love that these neighbors (on Home, across from Mills Park) did up their house for Valentine’s Day? I love it a lot — I actually parked the car and got out so I could take this picture for you. I picked up a few small outdoor Valentine decorations myself, which I’m hoping to have the energy to put up before the weekend, but nothing like this! Good job, neighbors!

In related news, I do like the effect of these little edible paper hearts on my vanilla-rose heart cookies. They are goofy, and I still kind of wish they actually tasted like something, but en masse, pretty charming. I’d planned to pipe little pink and white dots around the edge, but I ran out of time (and honestly, my hand is shaky and my piping skills are rarely great, so trying to do even dots might have been beyond me). If you’re good at piping, though, that would give these a more finished look, I think.

This order: passionfruit-honey-lime marshmallows (2), milk toffee (2), passionfruit gummies, vanilla-rose cookies, and a knitted heart soap. Such a sweet little package.

Making another batch of passionfruit-honey-lime marshmallows. Honey is just so, so pretty. I’m thinking the summer treat boxes may be honey-themed.

(I think there were 1-2 people who maybe wanted to switch from these marshmallows to other marshmallows after I said Kavi liked the other ones better, but I’m afraid I’ve lost track of who those people were. I may have already shipped your orders, sorry, but get in touch if you want me to check, please. Also, please don’t go by Kavi too much on this kind of thing — she doesn’t actually like honey at all. Her palate is still developing at 13, and she’s not up for complex flavors a lot of the time.)

The efficiency of this Valentine’s order pleases me. Not only did the recipient pick five fabulous sweets (dragonfruit chocolates, passionfruit-honey-lime marshmallows, chai meringue kisses, Sri Lankan cashew milk toffee, and chocolate-dipped crystallized ginger)…

…but she ALSO ordered masks (in two of my favorite patterns, “Calculating the Moon” (by Vincent Desjardins) and “Chasing Fireflies” (by Becca Smith))…

…AND pre-ordered Vegan Serendib. Woot!

I like it, people. I encourage you all to order sweets from me AND lots of other things too. Masks, tea towels, books, etc. You save on shipping this way too.

Pre-orders of Vegan Serendib are especially encouraged, because you’ll get a digital sampler right away, so you can start cooking, and since I’m not shipping physical items for a few months, it helps quite a bit with cash flow, which I’m learning is key to managing a small business, if I want to actually pay my staff.

I started with packing up lots of the ‘pick 3’ orders, because it was simpler to batch them that way, but now I’m starting to move on to some of the larger orders. Here’s a ‘pick 5’ from someone who loves marshmallows — they went for three different kinds of marshmallows + passionfruit gummies and cashew milk toffee. Yummy.

Here’s a funny note — the gummies don’t use any preservatives — they’re just fruit juice, gelatin, and a little sugar. So they start to dry out if stored at room temperature for more than a few days — which means that I keep them in the fridge, and then, if I pack them up before I’m ready to ship (in this case, it’s waiting on one of my staff to make me a postage label), I still want to store them refrigerated until I put them in the mail (right now, it’s pretty cold out here, so the mailbox should work pretty well as refrigeration too). So there are a couple cardboard shipping boxes in my fridge right now, which is just funny.

I don’t think I’ll do this again — if I offer gummies in the future, I’m going to want to develop a shelf-stable recipe. But that will require adding some chemical ingredients, I think, and a bit of experimenting. We’ll see. Chocolates are simpler, but the gummies are awfully cute. Hard to resist!

One of the interesting things for me about doing the ‘pick out of 15 options’ for the Valentine’s orders was that I got to see what was most popular very clearly. Anyone want to guess what the favorite sweet was?

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Sri Lankan cashew milk toffee!

I don’t know if it’s the Sri Lankan in the name setting it apart from the rest? Or just that cashew milk toffee is clearly insanely delicious. But it was sort of funny to me that it pulled so clearly ahead of the pack.

I think the second favorite were the dragonfruit chocolates (which are, I have to say, stellar), and then the gilded rose cayenne chocolates. I’m going to need to make second batches of all of those this weekend, I think, to finish fulfilling the Valentine’s orders.

And then the marshmallows line up after that, with the passionfruit dipped in dark chocolate coming slightly ahead of the others. I should make notes, so I remember to offer them again next year, if I’m still doing this kind of thing.

I’m actually hoping that by next year, we’ll be set up with Stephanie Bailey helping me with sweet-making, which means I probably should take some time to go over making Sri Lankan milk toffee with her this summer; it can be a little tricky, as all of my cousins will attest, I think.

The number of times I scorched it in my 20s and 30s, trying to get it right — it would make a Sri Lankan aunty weep!