Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Cooking Baking

Epiphany Bakes

60 Sweet Recipes from our Cake Window to Your Kitchen

by (author) Melissa Owen

Publisher
TouchWood Editions
Initial publish date
Oct 2024
Category
Baking, Individual Chefs & Restaurants, Desserts
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781771514255
    Publish Date
    Oct 2024
    List Price
    $45.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781771514453
    Publish Date
    Oct 2024
    List Price
    $18.99

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

"Epiphany Bakes is a collection of 60 sweet recipes from the founder of Epiphany Cakes, a bakery in Nelson, B.C., that has been supplying restaurants and cafés across the Kootenays for almost 20 years." —Globe and Mail

From Epiphany Cakes bakery in Nelson, BC, a collection of 60 recipes to cover all your dessert needs, from the ultimate hiking cookies to showstopping three-layer cakes, and including options for gluten-free and vegan confections.

Tucked into Nelson, BC’s leafy Uphill neighbourhood, Epiphany Cakes has been supplying sweet tooths, restaurants, and cafés across the Kootenays for almost twenty years. Now the bakery’s founder, Melissa Owen, shares 60 of her favourite dessert recipes with home cooks.

Epiphany Bakes offers ample vegan and gluten free options, and lots to satisfy everyone from lemon lovers to chocoholics to those who like a little salt in their sweet, with ingredients that call on Melissa’s Middle Eastern heritage and ones that are Kootenay through and through. Try your hand at

  • Simple Lemon Bars
  • Vegan Brownies with Smoked Sea Salt
  • Ube Cheesecake Bars
  • Backcountry Cookies
  • Vanilla Funfetti Cupcakes
  • Tahini Caramel Sandwich Cookies
  • Strawberry Frangipane Tarts
  • Chocolate Halva Cake, and many more.

Complemented by lush photography and stories of the friends, customers, and loyal staff who have made the bakery what is, you’ll find chapters on brownies and bars, cookies, tarts, and cakes (from simple to super-fancy), as well as building block doughs and icings, and a step-by-step guide to some seriously pro-level cake decorating. You might even find yourself having a kitchen epiphany of your own.

About the author

Melissa Owen is the owner of Epiphany Cakes, a bakery in Nelson, BC, that supplies cafés and restaurants across the Kootenays. After studying fine arts in university Melissa attended the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts in Vancouver, and went on to work as a pastry chef at Sweet Obsession and the Vancouver Art Gallery & Café. She has lived in Nelson since 2005. You can find her online at epiphanycakes.com.

Melissa Owen's profile page

Excerpt: Epiphany Bakes: 60 Sweet Recipes from our Cake Window to Your Kitchen (by (author) Melissa Owen)

FOREWORD

Nestled deep in the BC Interior, Nelson is home to one of the most charming little bakeries this side of the Rockies. As with the town itself, the journey to the bakery is almost as scenic as the destination. Imagine yourself leaving the bustling main street, climbing up or driving past the staircases that pass for sidewalks in this steeply pitched mountain town. You look around, enjoying the 360-degree mountain views and the friendly “hellos” from passing locals, but you’re starting to feel a bit . . . hungry. When you reach the leafy neighbourhood aptly known as Uphill, you’re greeted by the sweet smell of baking drifting out of an open window. Welcome to Epiphany Cakes!

Here you’ll find morning dog-walkers stopping to enjoy a treat in the glorious spring sun, a parade of littles clambering onto the child-size stepping stool to select a house-made ice cream sandwich on a hot summer afternoon, wool-swathed locals sipping coffee and enjoying slices of cake on a crisp autumn day, and bundled-up adventurers stopping by to fuel up on their way to or from—sometimes to and from—various winter activities.

Epiphany’s founder and baker-in-chief, Melissa Owen, has created a beautiful, whimsical delight of a bakery, and the sweet treats within are the expression of a highly skilled and experienced pastry chef and a deeply creative soul. Everything is lovingly crafted from scratch, with an eye for beauty and an attention to detail that makes each item a revelation. The recipes in this cookbook will give you a taste of this experience—familiar for locals, inspiring for future visitors.

One of my absolute favourite items is the iconic Epiphany Lemon Tart. The pastry is lightly golden, the filling glossy and yellow; the lemon custard is an impeccable balance of tart and sweet and creamy. If chocolate is more to your taste, the Classic Brownies and Salted Caramel Tarts are guaranteed crowd-pleasers. If your family or guests have dietary restrictions, you’ll find recipes, like the Chocolate Quinoa Cake, that they can enjoy too.

Melissa’s passion for her work and the way she and her talented staff genuinely care about their customers shines through the Epiphany Cakes experience, both at the Cake Window and within the pages of this cookbook. Bon apétit!

Sarah Butler
Author of The Wild Heavens

   

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Cookbooks are the perfect mélange of my very favourite things: photography, baking, and writing. The book in your hands is a dream that has been percolating for many years. I love cookbooks and have a ridiculously huge personal collection. I am delighted that my book is now a part of yours.

I took a circuitous route to the life I have today as the owner of Epiphany Cakes in picturesque Nelson, BC.

Food is my love language. I adore preparing it, sharing it, reading about it, photographing it, and of course, eating it. Yet I didn’t cook or bake at all when I was growing up. I barely have a single childhood memory that involves me in the kitchen.

I grew up in Bahrain, a tiny island in the Persian Gulf very close to Saudi Arabia. It’s so tiny that the letter “B” in “Bahrain” covers the entire country on most maps. My mother, Kamelia, was Egyptian. My father, Larry, was American. The food in our home was always inspired by my mom’s heritage. There were no cookies or muffins in our kitchen. I grew up devouring crème caramel, Turkish delight, and baklava.

The flavours of my childhood were a gorgeous, strange hybrid. In Bahrain, it was mangoes, fresh dates, jasmine, phyllo, pistachios, and salty ocean air. In Iowa, where my sister and I spent summers with our grandmother Esther, it was juicy sweet corn, pork and beans, homemade sun tea, and Lucky Charms.

My dad’s parents were dairy farmers near the Iowa–Minnesota border. After retiring from farming, they bought a small restaurant called the Corner Café in Lime Springs, Iowa. Growing up, I loved hearing my grandmother’s stories about the cafe, but I never imagined I would one day work in a kitchen myself.

I moved to McMinnville, Oregon, at age eighteen for college. I studied communications and maintained a complete lack of interest in the kitchen. I loved food but had zero curiosity about preparing it. By chance, during my second year at school, I found a job at Piontek’s Bakery and Cafe. in downtown McMinnville. The owners, Ken and Peggy Piontek, were a wonderful, quirky pair famous for massive cookies and the best baguettes in the area. They hired me to make coffee and serve customers at the front counter. I enjoyed the bustle of their busy kitchen and the constant flow of delicious baking that emerged from their huge oven. I tasted my first snickerdoodle cookie at Piontek’s—something I won’t ever forget.

I left McMinnville to begin an MFA program at the University of Oregon in Eugene. I was studying fine art photography, but life continued to gently nudge me into the kitchen. I got a part-time job working at Fenton & Lee, the sweetest little chocolate shop in Eugene’s leafy downtown. There, under the watchful eye of the owner, Janelle, I spent my shifts around a large table of women making and packaging chocolates. I loved how Janelle ran her crew and how friendly the work environment was. We rolled truffles, dipped caramels, and wrapped confections in colourful foils while listening to Louis Prima and chatting endlessly.

I enjoyed life in Eugene. I loved being surrounded by art and artists and being creative every day. But after seven years in Oregon, I missed the heat of the desert. It was time for me to return home to the Middle East.

When I was twenty-five, I moved to Dubai and started working at an advertising agency. It felt exciting to be living in such a vibrant, international community. I enjoyed all the luxuries that Dubai had to offer (so much amazing food!), but it was clear that working in an office was not my calling. I did art projects here and there—taking black-and-white photos on the weekends, snapping Polaroids everywhere I went—and became increasingly interested in writing. But I was restless and felt a deep call to spend more time being creative.

In 2000, my mother died suddenly, and I knew that it was time for me to leave Dubai. I ended up in Vancouver, BC, with my new partner, Nick, a scuba diving instructor whom I’d met in Dubai. As I grieved the loss of my mother, I explored our new city. I shopped at the fruit stands, made elaborate sandwiches loaded with cheeses and pesto from the Italian delis on Commercial Drive, wandered around the artist studios on Granville Island, and I began to cook—a lot.

Editorial Reviews

"Epiphany Bakes is a collection of 60 sweet recipes from the founder of Epiphany Cakes, a bakery in Nelson, B.C., that has been supplying restaurants and cafés across the Kootenays for almost 20 years." —Globe and Mail

"Beginning and experienced bakers alike will be enchanted by Owen’s cozy Canadian brand of culinary charm, which underscores the power of baking to bring people together." —Library Journal

“I am so excited that Melissa has created this beautiful new cookbook! Epiphany has been a fixture in our beloved community of Nelson for years. If we need a cake for any occasion, we buy one of Melissa’s many delicious creations. My son got married last summer on the beach at our house, and Epiphany made the most beautiful wedding cake you have ever seen! Nelson is a town of people who support each other in our endeavours, and our whole town is so proud of Melissa for putting together this collection of amazing recipes. Bravo, fellow cookbook writer!” —Shelley Adams, author of the Whitewater Cooks series