some exciting news

If you have not heard yet…drum roll, please…we are finally opening a storefront in downtown Mars Hill. It’s the perfect spot for us. If you are familiar with our downtown area (and, yes, go ahead and giggle – it is about 2 or 3 blocks long on Main Street), we are moving into the spot formerly held by the architect, Tory Stephen, and next to Three Sided Tattoo and two doors down from El Dorado Latin Grill.

In our shop, we will have our chocolates and confections, various desserts and bakery related snacks, and coffee and tea.

I was messing around with Photoshop the other day for the exterior view of the space and here it is: It’s just an idea of what our space might look like, oh the potential!

We hope to open in early August 2011 – yes, I know, it is about a month away. Hope to get paperwork finalized this week so we can start painting and getting the space ready.

In the middle of opening a store, we will still be at the North Asheville Tailgate Market on the UNCA campus. We will be there this Saturday, 9 July from 8am until noon.  Hope to see you there!

post tailgate market

We had another great market at the North Asheville Tailgate Market this past Saturday. It was another warm and humid day, but we got through it without any melting chocolate incidences. Thank goodness.

One of the good things about our new spot at the tailgate market is that we are next to the musicians for half of the day. And, I have to say that this week’s group was great. Actually had a lot of people who commented how much they enjoyed them. They were: One Leg Up; and according to their website they perform “a vibrant mixture of upbeat Gypsy Jazz, Latin, Swing and original jazz compositions.” Very appropriate for a beautiful Saturday morning hanging out at the tailgate market. I hope that they enjoyed it as well and hope that they return in the future. [I should add that only three members of the band were playing at the market, so with the complete five member band they must be more fantastic!]

It was also our second week of guess the new market goodie. It was the french macaron. And, to be more specific, it was a chocolate french macaron with Nutella inside. Oh, yeah. Chocolate goodness. We also brought back last week’s market goodie – the Italian Pizzelle made with anise. Look for our next market goodie clue on Thursday or Friday for the June 25th market. Again, if you would like to play along and plan on visiting us at the market that weekend, comment on our Facebook or Twitter page with your best guess.

french macaron: chocolate and nutella

Since local North Carolina blueberries are in season, we also dipped them in dark chocolate.

blueberries, raspberries and strawberries dipped in dark chocolate

Thanks for reading and your support! Have a great week!

new Saturday market goodie

We are going to try something new for our Saturdays at the North Asheville Tailgate Market. Nothing crazy. Just something different.

We are going to try and have a new goodie item of some relevance to chocolate & confectionery goodness. We will also (hopefully) be putting a picture up on our Facebook page – crumbs and cream nc - and on Twitter – crumbsandcream – a couple days before the market. But, we won’t tell you what it is right away. If you guess correctly (and are local, meaning that you can actually come to the market that weekend), you get a complimentary goodie!

Our first Saturday market goodie is: the Italian Pizzelle.

Here is some info (according to Wikipedia and the internet): they can be traced back to the Abruzzo region of south-central Italy; name comes from the Italian “pizze” meaning round and flat (like pizza); and are made on a pizzelle iron typically resembling a snowflake pattern.

The pizzelle has been made in our house, as well as my grandmother’s, traditionally with anise. For those not familiar with the term anise: think licorice. Not sure if my family’s heritage to southern Italy – my grandmother’s father was from a small town called Falconara – has anything to do with our enjoyment of the flat, crispy cookie. But, I like to think it has some influence.

the pizzelles, cooling

Hope to see you this weekend. And, keep an eye out for the week of Saturday 6.11.2011 and the new Saturday market goodie.

…Will probably be something personally related since it is one our birthdays

some help from you

We here at crumbs and cream nc – and, by ‘we,’ I mean myself and my mom – having started working on the specifics of opening up a store front. And, I will go more into a bit of our decision -making process in another post.

But, I thought that I would put this out there…If you are seriously interested in giving some monetary aid as an investment to support the growth of our small business: email us at crumbsandcreamnc@gmail.com and we will email back the details.

Thanks again. And, hope to see you in downtown Mars Hill on August 1st!

here we go…

You probably read or heard this before, but it looks even more likely that we will open a shop in downtown Mars Hill sometime over the summer. We have not signed the lease yet, but we think that is just a formality. We have a sweet little spot. An almost perfect spot.

Now, comes the difficult part. Trying to get everything ready to open. Having the capital to get the tangible items. Cutting back at the ‘full time’ job. Decisions, decisions. We are meeting with the local Small Business Center to look over the plan and try and help us make certain decisions. Lots of things to do.

Next comes funding. We are not money people, we like to think of ourselves as the creative types. Usually you are one or the other. And, sometimes you find that perfect match where one is creative and the other has more business knowledge. So, we are going to submit a project to Kickstarter and hope that they accept (and they don’t accept all proposals). In the mean time, we will look at other funding resources.

Most of you who read this blog personally know us and have supported us in some way before. Now, here is a new way…support the growth of a small business.

Hopefully, our economy is improving. And unlike big businesses who get multimillion dollar loans and tax breaks, our small and family owned business needs help from you. So, if you think you might be interested in micro-financed loans to to help crumbs and cream nc get some of the big items needed to open and get a modest return, plus some yummy chocolate, please contact us.

the sea of salts

It’s been about a month since the last post, been a bit busy trying to get the new kitchen ready and getting ready for the opening of the tailgate market season.

Hopefully, you have tried our sea salted dark chocolate covered caramels. Ours are a bit different than others since we use a variety of sea salts ~ from plain mediterranean sea salt to a dark smoky sea salt. I have wanted to post about our salts for a while. So, here they are:

The majority of our sea salts come from a business in downtown Asheville called The Spice & Tea Exchange . It’s a great store downtown. And, it is across the street from Malaprops (a book store) and The Earth Guild (handcraft supplies). Salts. Sugars. Teas. Many, many spices.

Here are most of the salts we use:

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mediterranean sea salt

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himalayan pink sea salt

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murray river sea salt

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french grey sea salt

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hawaiian red sea salt

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pinot noir sea salt (one of our new salts)

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cyprus black lava sea salt

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chocolate sea salt

(a bit smoky)

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chardonnay smoked sea salt

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alderwood smoked sea salt

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and our newest salt….

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ghost pepper sea salt

(a hot one indeed)

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thanks for reading. we should have some new news coming up soon! stay tuned. in the mean time, hope to see you at the North Asheville Tailgate Market on the UNCA campus (8am til noon) this Saturday, 14 May 2011. Then, we will be there every other weekend.

new 1st market date!

Very exciting news! We added a new first market date at the North Asheville Tailgate Market.

And, it will be Saturday ~ 30 April 2011.

Yippee!!!