Monday, February 20, 2012

Stowe Away!

Your blogger just returned from a few glorious days' vacation in Stowe, Vermont! The most memorable parts of this getaway involved winter sports and apres-ski relaxation, but a few desserts (obviously) found their way into the mix. So, what sweetened my vacation?
 
Let's start with a food item I have justified as breakfast as well as dessert: the apple cider donut. This classic New England donut may have found its most ultimate incarnation at Waterbury's Cold Hollow Cider Mill. The donuts are made mere minutes before they are served, with a rather interesting machine that is maybe a meter or so in length. A ring of dough is squirted into a bath of hot oil, which cooks the dough and sweeps it via some small current into a light glaze of shortening. This glaze soaks into the donut as it is pulled out of the oil by a conveyor belt, moved a short distance to help it dry and cool, and then dropped onto some waiting, oil-absorbing paper towels. The apparatus is rather efficient, as it kept up with the steady stream of donut-demanding customers. I understood why there were so many customers as soon as I tried a donut.
The treats are small, but they're positively bursting with apple and spice flavor. Apple varieties are so nuanced, and these donuts captured so many of those nuances, from the tangy and tart to the sturdy and sweet. (That's also a testament to Cold Hollow's wonderful cider, which uses multiple apple varieties in each batch!) Hints of cinnamon and nutmeg helped bring out the complexity. Many cider donuts use too little cider and therefore taste no different than a plain cake donut, or they go overboard with the spices. Cold Hollow avoids both traps and really lets their cider shine. The donuts' texture is unique, too. The edges were crispy, fresh out of the machine and even after a day or two post-making, while the inside remained chewy. It's no surprise that we brought a dozen of these little delights home!
 
After Cold Hollow, we stopped at the store that may be considered my life's introduction to specialty food emporia: Stowe's Harvest Market! Its enticing architecture (a barn-style building made modern, with floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed rafters/beams) and delectable contents (cheese, charcuterie, antipasti, bakery, chocolate, wine, beer, prepared sides) had me hooked from the first time I visited, years ago. As per usual, I left HM with a few containers of their homemade granola - oh so perfect with vanilla yogurt! - and a bakery treat. This year, it was a lemon square. The square had a somewhat-gooey shortbread base, which was delightfully buttery and sweet. The lemon filling was sturdy and tart, somewhere between a custard filling and the standard sugary glop used in most fruit squares. The topping was unusual; instead of the usual crumble topping or repeat of the base layer, it looked as though a basic sugar dough had been spread very thinly over the lemon filling, and left to harden and crackle as the treat was baking. I'm not usually a fan of sugar dough, but in this gooey setting I appreciated its grainy crunch. Turbinado sugar crystals also dotted that top layer, adding a little sparkle. The bakery case was overflowing with other equally tempting treats - muffins, brownies, cookie bars, miniature cakes, and so on. I would have loved to try them, but I knew that ample delights would be waiting at the top of the mountain!

Our lovely mountaintop resort was like heaven for the blissful few days I was there. Cold but not frigid temperatures, a fresh snowfall on top of existing snowpack, and cheerful sunlight all made for a wonderful time exploring the backcountry on skis and snowshoes. Inside, comforting European decor, cozy living rooms, roaring fires, fragrant fresh flowers, and quality locavore fare enabled an equally wonderful time spent relaxing and recharging. I'd like to call out four particular dessert experiences:
  • Afternoon tea - every afternoon, the resort offered tea and cookies in the lounge. It felt so good, after a full morning and afternoon of exercise, to come in from the cold, sip something warm, and nibble something sweet. I reliably drank Harney & Sons' Red Raspberry herbal tea, and munched on whatever cookies looked best. I remember having cranberry oatmeal, chocolate chip, and chocolate cake cookies...and on Valentine's Day, a heart-shaped sugar cookie completely covered in red sugar. Yum!
  • Lake Champlain chocolates - every evening, staff would come into the guest rooms, turn down your bed, and leave chocolates on your pillow. These heart-shaped Lake Champlain nibbles were so tasty, and the cutest way to end the day! Creamy milk chocolate came in a pinkish-purple wrapper, and smooth dark chocolate was wrapped in bold red.
  • The ultimate fudge brownie - the resort's network of cross-country ski trails take you all sorts of interesting places, one of which is a rustic log cabin that offers hearty lunch fare. I skied the winding, uphill trails to the cabin twice during our stay, and was rewarded with one of the most epic brownies I've ever had. Imagine a THICK top layer of fudge, with a brownie underneath that had more textures than you thought was possible in a 3/4"-thick baked good. The part nearest the fudge absorbed the moisture from that fudge and became just as gooey, while the non-fudge surface was dry and crumbly. The intervening brownie fell anywhere on the spectrum between those two extremes. Such a delight! It had such a good chocolate flavor, too. This may become a more compelling reason to ski to the cabin than the beneficial exercise...
  • Sachertorte - or, what one bakery staff member called a sachertorte. This Wikipedia article suggests that a genuine sachertorte has chocolate sponge cake and apricot jam, two things our dessert lacked. Still, it was delicious! The cake was very dense and chocolatey, like an extremely concentrated bittersweet chocolate mousse. I don't think it contained any flour, and there was no airiness at all; the cake was smooth enough, with maybe a little graininess from what I'm guessing was cocoa powder. In addition to the robust bittersweet chocolate flavor, the cake had a hint of sourness or tanginess about it, as if sour cream or yogurt were used as its liquid base. The cake was covered in an extremely thin layer of slightly sweeter chocolate; it crackled into eggshell-like pieces when I forked through it. I'm guessing it was applied as a melted drizzle rather than spread with a knife. The cake's top had the pleasant addition of white chocolate dollops, which had been swirled into the existing chocolate coating to make heart-like shapes on the surface. So sweet! You can see the cake here; to its right is a mug of the resort's homebrewed Vienna lager. Ah, dessert and beer. I was clearly happy with this repast, but I'm still in search of a genuine sachertorte.
That search will have to continue in the post-Stowe world, as I am now back in Boston. I miss the slopes and the invigorating mountain air, but a good dose of city life won't hurt! Here's to whatever dessert - and vacation! - may be next.

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