S’mores the merrier

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This article was published 08/12/2018 (2582 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To loosely quote Robert Burns, the best laid schemes of mice and men — and s’mores — often go awry.

Caitlin Giesbrecht and Nicole Pellaers are the brains behind Folk + Fire, an eight-month-old enterprise that turns out gourmet s’mores.

A few months before officially launching their retail product, which they believe to be the first of its kind in Canada, Giesbrecht and Pellaers went winter camping with friends at Riding Mountain National Park. The pair, who had been keeping their business plans largely under wraps, figured the weekend getaway would provide them the perfect opportunity to try out a few of their recipes on their unsuspecting pals. (In case you’ve been living under a barbecue pit your entire life, s’mores, short for “some more,” are a traditional campfire confection consisting of roasted marshmallows topped with melted chocolate, wedged between two graham wafers.)

Let us guess: after sampling Giesbrecht and Pellaers’s creations, their friends were blown away by how scrumptious they were, granting the women the confidence they needed to seriously pursue their venture? Er, not quite.

“Our friend Brooke was responsible for getting the groceries and because I wanted to keep everything a secret ‘til the last moment I just wrote down ‘s’mores’ on the shopping list, along with the ingredients we’d need,” Giesbrecht says, seated next to Pellaers in a Graham Avenue coffee house. “During the drive there, I teasingly said something like, ‘Boy, I sure am looking forward to having some s’mores this weekend.’ At which point my friend Brooke turned to me with a surprised look on her face and said, ‘I didn’t know you wanted s’mores for real? I thought that was just a suggestion so I didn’t buy anything.’”

 

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In October 2017, Giesbrecht and Pellaers, friends from work, went camping together at Tulabi Falls in Nopiming Provincial Park. On their first night there, Giesbrecht, a former camp counsellor, prepared s’mores the same way she’d done for years, by adding “random stuff” such as coconut, bacon and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to the mix. Pellaers was instantly impressed, declaring, “Oh my god, these are so good” between bites.

That’s when Giesbrecht, winner of the outstanding marketing student of the year award during her tenure at North Dakota’s Valley City State University, informed Pellaers she’d been tossing around the notion of some type of business, maybe a café, that revolved around gourmet-style s’mores, but was having trouble figuring out how to bring her plan to fruition.

To which Pellaers, a graduate of the University of Winnipeg’s business administration program, immediately responded, “Great idea. How can I help?”

By the time they returned to Winnipeg, they had typed a long list of notes and goals into their phones, step one of which was to teach themselves how to make their own marshmallows and graham wafers.

“If we were going to do this right our number one priority was that everything would have to be made from scratch,” Giesbrecht says, describing herself as “comfortable in the kitchen,” thanks to countless hours spent baking alongside her mother and grandmother while growing up. “I’ll admit after the first couple tries, when the marshmallows turned out all flat, Nicole was like, ‘we so do not have a business.’ I told her not to worry, that we’d figure it out and sure enough, by December (2017) we had come up with a recipe that worked, and we were ready to move onto flavours.”

In March, the ladies hosted a tasting party for friends and family members, during which they oven-roasted a variety of s’mores, including ones dubbed the “Lumberjack” (espresso marshmallow and a square of Belgian chocolate sandwiched between two chocolate graham wafer cookies), the “Rocky Mountain” (a cookies and cream marshmallow between chocolate graham wafers) and the “Canadian” (a maple syrup marshmallow wedged inside two honey graham wafers).

“On his way in one of the guys said he’d always hated s’mores. So when he made a point of coming up to us later and telling us how much he was enjoying ours, I was pretty sure we had a winner on our hands,” Pellaers says with a chuckle.

After a month of dropping hints on their website (www.folkandfire.ca), Giesbrecht and Pellaers began taking online orders on May 1— from as far away as Alberta and Newfoundland — for individual kits, which include everything you need to make four s’mores, short the flame. Based on demand, by June they were also offering bags of marshmallows and wafers on their own, which led to one of their favourite testimonials to date.

“A friend of ours ran out of our graham wafers, so he tried our marshmallows with store-bought ones instead. He said it was like eating a steak sandwich on stale bread,” Giesbrecht says, mentioning she’s also heard from people who’ve used their marshmallows to make — OK, how great would this be? — Rice Krispies treats.

 

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(If you’re reading this thinking, “Sure, I like s’mores as much as the next person but aren’t they more of a summer thing?” think again. Giesbrecht and Pellaers’s December schedule is turning out to be every bit as hectic as a certain, jolly old elf’s.

“Right now, we’re pretty much living and breathing marshmallows,” says Pellaers, who lives a block away from the Corydon Avenue commercial kitchen where they prepare their treats on an almost-daily basis. “The retail outlets that were stocking us (The Forks Trading Company at The Forks and the Clear Lake Trading Post in Clear Lake) are sold out but we’re still taking orders through our website, which we’ll personally deliver, just like Santa, later this month.”

“Because we’re so new to the game, we really enjoy having that face-to-face contact with our customers, ringing their doorbells and dropping off their kits,” Giesbrecht pipes in. “People seem to like it, too — it’s an Amazon world, after all — so for sure, whatever we can do to make it easier on their end, we’re willing to do.”

Come the new year, the pair intend to add social get-togethers such as corporate luncheons and wedding receptions to their itinerary by erecting temporary roasting stations on-site, where they’ll prepare s’mores using a culinary torch. As for a brick and mortar location of their own, that remains an objective, too.

“Our thinking is it will be the sort of place that will replicate that whole sense of community that goes hand-in-hand with camping, where you can just hang out with friends,” Pellaers says. “Because let’s face it, how often do you make s’mores when you’re by yourself? It’s almost always with a group of people, sitting in front of a fire, sharing stories and creating memories. That’s the kind of vibe we want Folk + Fire to have, too.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca