The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
CULINARY GRACE
Handmade sweets at Gráinne Baking Co. crafted with love
DEEP RIVER » Imagine a brownie that’s so moist and so loaded with smooth dark chocolate that it melts in the mouth like a truffle.
That’s the quality — and decadence — of each modestly sized gourmet cookie and bar that Jillian Simms hand makes in small batches made to order.
For just about two years, Simms, owner of Gráinne Baking Co., has crafted brownies, cookies and other treats with locally sourced butter, eggs and bourbon and 72 percent Belgian dark chocolate in a tiny kitchen that she shares with an ice cream shop.
These brownies are about half the size of a typical one found in a bakery — and for good reason.
“I want it to be so good that one brownie will be enough for you,” said Simms. “You don’t need to have two or three, you can have one and have the experience of having something that is crafted from the best ingredients available.”
Her brown butter shortbread comes in pop-in-your-mouth postage-stamp size squares, tied in a little cotton bag like a picture-perfect culinary gift to one’s self — or a loved one.
Simms has a philosophy of desserts that some watching their weight may find surprising.
“Everyone has their own ideas when to have sweets. I think they’re just part of life,” she said. “I love sweets — that’s why I do this. I try to keep the portions reasonable and satisfying.”
The question is whether to have one cookie or four, she said. “That’s the way to keep things in balance,” said the pastry chef, who studied theater education at Virginia Commonweath University, then got a job making vegan pastries at ION restaurant in Middletown in 2005. After a year, she moved on to South End Buttery in Boston.
Simms said she grew up enjoying food made from scratch by her mother, who taught her how to bake.
“I loved being in the kitchen with her,” Simms said, where she and her brother learned about math, science and fractions. Her mother “was probably just trying to keep us busy. I think there’s a reason why fractions are the only math that comes easily to me, because I’ve been doing it since I was tiny.”
That doesn’t mean Simms didn’t try to sneak in a bit of junk food when she could, however.
“I remember being in grade school,” Simms said. “We didn’t have Oreos or Doritos, primarily because my parents were young and those things were expensive. It was cheaper to make things at home.”
The other children in the school cafeteria, however, were envious of the homemade treats and often wanted to trade their Oreos, she said.
Her mother still makes 1,000 cookies around the holidays for friends, family and gifts, Simms said.
Her earliest memories of the kitchen are the driving force of what she now does.
“I remember my greatgrandmother’s chocolate cake recipe and the leavening reaction,” Simms said. “I remember being a kid and baking with my mom and we would pour warm water over it and it would fizz up, cause a chemical reaction and you’d stir it into the batter. It was so cool.”
As she grew older, Simms would go to a friend’s house or to a party, bringing along a sweet ending that she’d spent hours perfecting.
“I’d spend my days making an elaborate dessert with different components and baking cake layers and pastry layers and poaching pears,” Simms said. “I’d show up and people would be like, ‘Oh. No brownies?’ That’s what everyone kind of fixated on.”
So when she decided to start her own enterprise, “it just followed to keep the core of my business — those basic things that I had been working on and tweaking the recipes [of] for years.”
Gráinne [pronounced GRAN-ya] means “grace,” a nod to her Irish heritage.
“I loved all that’s inherent in that word: generosity of spirit and sharing and that’s what this is all about,” Simms said. “Feeding people — I really believe it’s an act of love.”
Because she began with the concept of supporting small farms and purveyors, Simms said she got to know farmers and producers.
“Focusing on locally sourced ingredients is really important to me, so my eggs [from Cold Spring Farms in Colchester], honey, whenever I can get dairy, and the bourbon I use in my blondies.”
Between her burgeoning business selling at farmers markets and through her website, Gráinne has turned into a full-time enterprise. Her recipes are more focused toward an adult palate — but oftentimes children love them, too, she said.
“I want everyone to taste more than just sugar,” Simms said. “The sugar level is something I always keep an eye on — not necessarily for health reasons but making sure the sugar is balanced, and has that balanced flavor. It’s really important.”
Every morning she and her husband enjoy her granola for breakfast sprinkled over goat milk yogurt from Beltane Farm and topped with a drizzle of honey from Stonewall Apiary in Hanover, a tiny section of Sprague.
“Having great honey, the flavor is so amazing,” Simms said.
The ingredients of her granola are simple — oats, almonds, pecans, pumpkin seeds, unsweetened coconut, honey and six different kinds of dried fruit: light and dark raisins, dried apricots, cranberries, blueberries and tart cherries.
Her very popular blondies contain pecans, cocoa nibs, bourbon and caramelized white chocolate.
“It’s sort of a play on this bar cookie my grandmother made while growing up,” Simms said.
Keeping it local, Simms said, “hopefully, in some small way, it helps other small businesses in Connecticut help each other out. We have so many people with incredible vision farming and raising animals and producing just incredible things in the state.”
As she works in the kitchen, Simms said, she thinks about her customer and the person he or she may be sending some of her treats to — even when she has no idea who either are.
“I hope they can have a little moment in their day when they feel cared about. ‘Someone made this just for me,’” she imagines them saying. “Maybe they can feel a little bit of love and care that goes into each one. I hope they can feel the love and care Cold Stone Farm puts into raising their animals, the well-cared-for hens that lay the eggs.”
“I have the luxury as a business owner of taking time with everything and can pay attention to those details: just being mindful of small things that are going to make a difference,” she said.
Simms will be among the vendors selling their wares at the Open Air Market and Festival at the Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown on Aug. 27 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and her products can be found at the Chester, East Haddam, Lyme, Colchester and other area farmers markets.
For more information, see grainnebaking.com or call 860-876-7568. For details on the open air market, visit wadsworthmansion.com.