Seasonal suggestions

[CanadianBakin']

Many of you bake higher end desserts where I will be doing simpler fare at a high-end coffee house but your input will still be valuable. I'm wondering which flavours you focus on for the different seasons. For starters, I was speaking with the owners about pumpkin and we were wondering if that is a flavour that runs throughout the fall and winter or is it more for Thanksgiving. As we are Canadian it confuses things a bit since our Thanksgiving is mid-October so it's more than 2 months from then till Christmas. I was reading this thread begun by FlourPower...

We have less than a month before celebrating the one year mark for our bakery. It's been one hell of an education. My question to the group is: what are the seasonal/holiday product trends you've seen? We're in the Midwest and I'm curious to see if it's true for other locales. Here's my observations. Some are obvious, but a few things surprised me.

January: Bleak. Very, very bleak.

February: okay, but Valentine's Day is huge. Lots of cakes, cheesecakes, anything red, white or heart shaped flies out the door (predictably).

Easter: lots of orders for cakes, but none for pies. Once the day comes, we get a lot of requests for pie. Cakes do great. Anything with coconut does well, as do carrot cakes.

Spring: cake season

Mother's Day: verrrry slow

Father's Day: chocolate cake time

Memorial Day/summer: lots and lots of pies and tarts. Last year nobody wanted a fruit pie until July 4, but after that we couldn't make enough.

November: a slow build until Thanksgiving. Amazingly, sweet potato pie outsells pumpkin. This gives me hope for humanity.

December: crazy. Lots of bars, cookies and cakes.

I'm interested to hear from others.

...which gave me a start. Can anyone else help with more specifics? Thanks.

Edited November 5, 2004 by CanadianBakin' (log)

[jgarner53]

I would add apple and pear (pies, tarts, turnovers, muffins, etc.) for fall especially: Sept through November.

Also, wouldn't chocolate items also sell well at Valentine's day, too?

OK, chocolate is good almost any time of the year, but around the holidays (Nov through Dec), chocolate should be popular (particularly for New Years, I should think)

I don't really start thinking about pumpkin until I see them for Jack O'Lanterns in the store, but maybe that's me

[FlourPower]

We don't start getting requests for pumpkin items until we've had a week of jacket-type weather. We had a warm fall this year, so even though the leaves were turning people could still wear shorts. Now that it's 60 degrees or cooler, pumpkin stuff sells like crazy. It usually tapers off in December, though. Maybe that's because people overdo the pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving.

Sweet potato and hazelnut are two other flavors that are do well in the fall.

Generally speaking, the colder the weather, the richer the desserts. Cheesecakes, chocolate tortes, etc, seem to do better when it's cold. Does any of this help?

[Wendy DeBord]

In the fall I focus alot on fall fruits-pears, apples, pumpkins. Fall also means to me fruit pies, bread pudding, kolchky, cinnamon, caramel, crisps, crumbles, chai, simple (unfrosted) harvest type cakes, creme brulee'. (forgive my late night spelling, please)

Winter begins the day after Thanksgiving to me, I stop all fall items then. Winter I focus again more on the fruits available-like not alot! I lean toward chocolate (all 3), tarts with nuts in them, fancy tortes, cherries (groites in brandy), definately heavy on traditional cakes (European tortes), borrowing 'linzer' features into other desserts, creme brulee's, floating island, cheesecakes, mint (but not fresh mint the herb) small fancy cookies, molton cakes, souffles. I keep cinnamon until xmas but drop it after the first of the year.

Spring I start into citrus fruits, using lemon, lime, key lime, orange. Pineapple, coconut.........ah I guess I lean tropical- getting warmed up for the summer fruits to come. I fade away from chocolates big time and start focusing on fruits again.

Summer to me is strawberries, peaches, plums, grapes. Sorbets, ice creams, freezer cakes, family cakes like banana and carrot. Summer pudding, trifles, shortcakes, chocolate chip cookies.

[CanadianBakin']

Thank you for all your suggestions. It gives me some ideas for planning ahead.

An additional flavour question; do you use fresh or dried cranberries at all and if you do, do you save them for Christmas time or use them year round?

[FlourPower]

Thank you for all your suggestions. It gives me some ideas for planning ahead.

An additional flavour question; do you use fresh or dried cranberries at all and if you do, do you save them for Christmas time or use them year round?

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We use dried year-round in oatmeal cranberry cookies and apple-cranberry muffins. We use fresh ones in apple cranberry pies (big at Thanksgiving, obviously) and in orange/cranberry scones. We stop using the fresh ones around January.

[Wendy DeBord]

Ditto, I stop using them after x-mas. I don't have alot of recipes that involve dried fruits............but if I did, I'd use those year round.