Home Cake Decorating located in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle since 1962

Hello, Baking fam.

I love Autumn in Seattle!

Hello, again! 🍂🍁🥧

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! It was quieter here which gave me some extra time to prep for the fall & holiday season and to look for some fun new products. To get us all in the mood for autumn baking, I’ve put together a Fall Baking Shopping Guide.

This weekend we’re going apple picking. I recently heard that there are currently over 7,500 named apple varieties but that over time there may have been over 20,000 (or some sources say 30,000) varieties! How many apple varieties do you think you’ve had in your lifetime?! I’ve made a fall goal to try 12 new varieties this year. We’ll check in on how I do later. 

Halloween supplies are out now! Sprinkles, cookie cutters, packaging, pans, and more. It’s already going fast so make sure to stop in for your supplies soon. Make sure you check out the Haunted Halloween Cookie Decorating Contest, too. This year you get to choose your cutter from our fall and Halloween selection.

Holiday season gets pretty busy around here, so I’m planning to hire a couple of folks to help out at the shop. I would particularly love to hear from you if you’re interested in helping with social media or inventory management, in addition to working on the salesfloor. Check out the job description and application.

I’m excited to hear what everyone is baking for the holidays! Let’s chat next time you’re in the shop.

The Proving Box: Summer Wrap-up

We wrapped up our Summer Piñata Workshop series with so many fun ones! We’re working on getting a workshop schedule ready for the fall so keep your eye out in the next issue.

I’ve heard people are interested in cookie decorating, piping skills, basic cake decorating, and more. Let us know what you’re interested in.

I’m also thinking about a small vendor craft fair hosted in the shop, so if you’ve got something fun to sell (candles, crafts, jewelry, pottery, or something else??), I’d love to hear about it! Does that sound like something you’d like to attend?

We had a couple of cookbook exchanges too and there’s several books still in the shop, so I set up a permanent Leave One, Take One Cookbook Exchange. It’s in the back near the candles. Feel free to bring in any baking (or baking-adjacent) cookbooks you’re ready to part with and maybe pick up a new one.

Curious Crumbs: A Brief History of Sprinkles

Jimmies, shots, and hundreds-and-thousands: what you call them says where you're from

I promised a sprinkles deep dive, so here we go! Fair warning, this is a heated topic because there are many names for the different varieties and I’ve only got a bit of space to give you a smidge of background (not that this ended up being short, haha). 

First things first, what actually is a sprinkle?! Well, for some folks it's the longer, skinny, sugar forward rainbow confection that goes on top of ice cream or in a confetti cake or on cupcake frosting…but wait, aren’t those jimmies? What are nonpareils? Or hundreds and thousands?! Doesn’t sprinkles as a category cover all of those?? It sure does! 

Let’s get more specific. Out here in the PNW & on the west coast we typically say "sprinkles" to represent the long, rod shaped confectionary topping (whether rainbow, chocolate, or other colors). In Boston, Philly, and some parts of New Jersey they're "jimmies" (although sometimes that only means the chocolate ones!). Some Connecticut folks say "shots." The Dutch put chocolate ones on buttered bread for breakfast and call them hagelslag, which means "hail.” Have you heard them called “vermicelli?" That was a new one for me, but I hear it often in the shop! Aussies and Kiwis do "fairy bread" (sprinkles on buttered white bread) at kids' parties. And in the UK and Australia, nonpareils (the small round sugar balls, usually rainbow colors) are "hundreds and thousands."

The jimmy. Those little rods have a murky origin story. The candy company Just Born (the Peeps people) says it invented them in Brooklyn in the 1930s and named them after an employee. But ads for chocolate sprinkles show up in the 1920s, so nobody's completely sure. There's still no agreement on jimmies vs. sprinkles. Word experts say the dividing line runs through central New Jersey, and brand names often decide which word wins where. We won’t bring crunchy or soft into the conversation. But we ought to let you know that most sprinkles are actually fairly delicious these days rather than the terrible waxy ones that used to be the only thing available. ….and if we’re going there, it’s worth mentioning that Red 3 is being removed from just about everything at this point, so colors will be different and getting vibrant colors in mass produced sprinkles is harder these days. 

The original nonpareils. The name is French for "without equal." Historians disagree on the date, but these tiny sugar beads go back to France in the 1600s or 1700s. They were made by hand-coating tiny centers in layer after layer of sugar, which took skill and lots of expensive refined sugar, so they were a luxury. By the 1800s, American cookbooks were scattering them over custards and iced cakes. Once machines came along, they moved from the pastry chef's shelf to the home kitchen. Nonpareil doesn’t only refer to the rainbow candy confection though; any candy coated thing technically qualifies, including my favorite Jordan Almonds. Who remembers the flat chocolate disc candies covered in nonpareils that were just called (you guessed it…) nonpareils?! I loved those as a kid but haven’t seen them in ages. Apparently, Guittard still makes them though!

What’s in a Name? By the mid-1900s the big brands were just labeling everything "decors" or “decorettes.” Guittard has registered the name “Decoratifs” for their chocolate sprinkle. Then sprinkles went viral again this year with DotCakes, a New York bakery whose cakes are actually covered in nonpareils. Bigger nonpareils (also called “sugar beads”) mean a harder crunch, and as we found in our June test, nonpareils bleed color into your batter. Keep them on top! 

Bonus: The Sugar Family, Explained. Sparkly and crunchy sugars aren't all the same thing. Most of our sanding sugars are extra fine, made for a soft, even shimmer on cookies and cupcakes without dissolving in the oven. Coarser CON AA sugar has bigger crystals for more crunch and sparkle. Turbinado and Demerara are less-refined golden sugars with a hint of molasses, great on top of muffins or scones. Belgian pearl sugar is a different animal entirely: dense, pea-sized nubs that go inside the batter, not on top, and caramelize into the crunchy pockets you find in real Liège waffles. Swedish pearl sugar is its smaller, lighter cousin, mostly used as a topping. Fine for shimmer, coarse for crunch, pearl for pockets of caramel.

Sprinkle Cheat Sheet

• Sprinkles or Jimmies: soft (or crunchy!) rods. Great for confetti cakes and ice cream.

• Nonpareils: small crunchy beads. Best on top, not in batter. 

• Sugar Beads: larger than nonpareils and sold in millimeter sizes (11mm is the biggest we have and 3mm is the smallest).

• Quins: flat shapes, round, star, or literally any other shape. Cute on cookies and cupcakes.

• Thick candy sprinkles: not an official title, but popular in a variety of shapes and sizes. Use sparingly as they are hard. Can be found in some mixes.

• Dragées: metallic pearls, almost always labeled ‘for decoration only’ because the pesky FDA says the metal on the outside isn’t really for eating. Fun Fact: these are not legal to be sold in California.

• Sanding sugar: sparkle for cookies and scones. Sanding sugar is usually finer than Con AA, which is coarse sugar.

Further Reading

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprinkles

• https://www.foodandwine.com/news/history-sprinkles

• https://billypenn.com/2017/03/20/jimmies-vs-sprinkles-why-philly-fights-over-what-we-call-an-ice-cream-topping/

• https://penknife.substack.com/p/a-little-sociocultural-history-of

• https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2011/10/11/specialty-sugars-all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-and-more

The Community Table: The Haunted Cookie Contest is back! 🎃

Shop Notes: Fall Baking Shopping Guide

Fall is such a lovely time for baking. It’s starting to get chilly, so that oven helps warm up the house. The scents and flavors are so cozy. And everyone who loves a treat is sure to find a flavor they love, from apple to maple to cinnamon to pumpkin. 

The Mystery Ingredient: Summer Winners!

So excited for you to be following along with us! See you soon at the shop and don’t forget to show me all the fun stuff you’re baking! Rebecca 🖤🧁

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