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Calgary Herald

Sweet! Crave celebrates 20 years with a new cookbook

Time sure flies when you're eating cupcakes. Article content Article content Twenty years ago, when Sex and the City was still a taste-making show, a shot of Sarah Jessica Parker's character Carrie Bradshaw devouring a pink frosted cupcake in front of NYC's Magnolia Bakery launched thousands of cupcake shops around the world. This scene aired only a few years before Calgary got a cool cupcake bakery of our own in the form of the still-thriving Crave, but co-founders/sisters Carolyne McIntyre Jackson and Jodi Willoughby have always been more inspired by home baking in the country than big city trends. Article content Article content 'I always loved to bake. We grew up on a farm outside of High River, and I was always in the kitchen baking,' McIntyre Jackson says. 'We would always bake from scratch and never had a cake mix in our house.' Article content Article content That love of baking led to the sisters opening Crave in 2004, and they immediately garnered fanfare with their delectable cupcakes made with their mother's timeless buttercream frosting recipe. Since then, Crave has expanded to four bakeries within Calgary as well as one in Edmonton and another in Saskatoon (all selling much more than those signature cupcakes) and also sells bake-at-home products for customers who want something better than the typical grocery store brands. While the cake mixes and tubs of frosting can tide Crave fans over between trips to the bakeries, McIntyre Jackson and Willoughby wanted to share the recipes that form the backbone of their business with a cookbook. Article content Article content Article content Crave: Cupcakes, Cakes, Cookies, and More from an Iconic Bakery was released earlier this month, and the book not only stands as a document of the goods that have made it onto Crave's shelves over the years, but also as a history of the co-founders' family recipes. The sisters say every treat ever sold at Crave stems from a family recipe – either their own or one of their staff's. Those formulas were tweaked for larger production and to gussy them up a bit, but for the past 20 years, the bakery has focused on using wholesome ingredients and traditional baking techniques. Article content McIntyre Jackson and Willoughby promise that, unlike some famous restaurants and bakeshops, they haven't downgraded the recipes just a little to discourage home bakers from making exact replications instead of buying them at the shop (yes, this is a thing). Rather, the relative simplicity of the new Crave book showcases that the bakery doesn't just talk a good talk: the goods they sell really are based on good, old-fashioned home baking. While pastry decoration can be a more elusive skill, there are plenty of tips for those who want picture-perfect cupcakes.