No taste like home

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This article was published 29/08/2023 (826 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vira Volt is a very picky person.

It’s how she introduces herself upon meeting and it’s the driving force behind her new bakery business.

In the 17 years since immigrating to Winnipeg, she’s been unable to satisfy her cravings for the kind of sweets she grew up enjoying in Ukraine. The offerings from local bakeries were too sweet for her discerning palate and the menus were missing the eastern European staples she desired.

So, after decades of dreaming, Volt decided to start a bakery.

Honey Bunny Pastry Shop, located at the corner of Corydon Avenue and Lilac Street, has been open since the beginning of August, but its existence is still surreal.

“I’m still surprised,” Volt says when asked how it feels to be standing in the cosy storefront of her own bakery. “It came to the point where I said, ‘I’m either doing it now or never.’”

Volt studied pastry making and worked in bakeries in Ukraine, but moved into the legal field when she came to Winnipeg. At home, however, her free time was spent in the kitchen perfecting familial favourites and developing more than 1,500 of her own dessert recipes.

“We don’t have many pleasures in life and this is a huge pleasure for me,” Volt says of baking. “It’s like an art form.”

Honey Bunny is a family affair, with daughter Finnen Volt managing the front-of-house operations.

“As soon as she said, ‘I’m opening a business,’ I was like, ‘OK, great I guess so am I,’” Finnen says with a laugh.

While baking isn’t her forte, it’s been a privilege to help make her mom’s dream a reality.

“I cannot explain how proud I am. As immigrants to Canada, they spent literally every last penny to come here and now, 17 years later, we’ve got a bakery.”

After much deliberation, the pair settled on Honey Bunny as the name of their new venture.

“It’s the bunny that brings sweets down for Easter. We wanted to choose something kind, something childish,” Volt says.

The name also meshed with their esthetic vision for the bakery — one inspired by the pastoral scenes of The Tale of Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter’s bucolic universe.

Bunnies are nestled throughout the bakery, adorning wall plates surrounding a working cuckoo clock, drawn on menu boards and decorating the pastry cases. The piece de resistance is a multi-tiered diorama set inside a vintage display case, where rabbit miniatures are busy drinking tea, playing piano and relaxing around a faux fireplace.

The former retail space required a lot of work to turn it into a functioning bakery, but Volt’s pickiness prevailed.

“Everyone told me, no this is not the place, it’s not going to work, you have to change literally everything her, but I still insisted. I think it’s the perfect location,” she says.

As a baker, Volt is confident in the quality of her products. She imports ingredients she can’t find locally, relies on natural flavours in lieu of added sugar and makes many components in-house, such as the cream cheese used in her airy cheesecakes.

“Everyone has their own taste,” she says. “If someone says they don’t like something, it’s a question of taste; I know it’s not a question of quality, because it’s the best. I’m sure 100 per cent.”

Over the last month, she’s been rolling out recipes from her extensive catalogue to figure out which desserts are a hit with customers. The traditional tarts, eclairs, truffles and cakes have found an excited audience with other international expats.

“The community has been really, really supportive,” Finnen says. “People have been coming in and saying, ‘Oh my God, my grandmother used to make this cake’… and that’s so heartening to hear.”

“People are coming here and recognizing things they haven’t seen for years,” Volt adds. “We bring home to people.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @evawasney