Rejection led to sweet success for farm sisters from High River

Sisters Jodi Willoughby and Carolyne McIntyre Jackson are the kind of people you instantly want to be your best friends. At least I do and not only because they know how to make a fine batch of cookies.

Walking in the door of Crave, you're instantly enveloped in the warm, buttery smell of baking real, from-scratch baking.

Baking is something McIntyre Jackson loved to do her whole life, and after several rejections she managed to turn into a successful business.

The sister grew up on a mixed farm just outside High River, where McIntyre Jackson was the baker among her three siblings.

"My sisters would always be out on the farm riding horses, and I was the figure skater, the one inside baking all the time," she told me over coffee (Monogram is sharing counter space in their Kensington location) and a slab of moist gingerbread loaf on a recent snowy afternoon. "They'd be out moving the cattle, and I'd be inside making them something good to eat. It's just what we did I was always baking."

After university, where she got a BSc in food management from the University of Alberta, McIntyre Jackson started baking cookies at Safeway. She tried to get a job at Sunterra, but was turned down twice.

"One night we were at our cousin's house obviously I brought him cookies and he was like, you should open a bakery. And I was like, yeah right if I had a million dollars, I'd love to open a place and make people happy all the time. And then I realized maybe I didn't need a million dollars."

'People thought we were crazy'

She started small, and applied to get into the Millarville market both the regular and the Christmas market and got turned down. Twice. A friend walked by the vacant space in Kensington, and urged her to check it out. Willoughby was working in the non-profit sector at the time, but jumped at the opportunity to partner with her sister.

"We opened up at the height of the Atkins diet and people thought we were crazy," McIntyre Jackson says.

"People walked in the door and were like, you're going to make a living selling cupcakes?" Willoughby added. "And we'd say, 'we're sure going to try.' "

Although they're known for their cupcakes, topped with a towering flourish of perfect buttercream, Crave also bakes some of the best cookies, loaves and pies in the city as well as full-sized cakes. During the holidays, they roll out their festive cookie selection, a dozen or so cookies and squares, including their famous Twix and salted nut bars, thumbprints, gingerbread sandwiches and pecan snowballs.

"That shortbread we have on our shelves right now? It's the same shortbread I've been making since I was seven, up on a little stool in the kitchen on the farm," McIntyre Jackson says.

They still beat the butter for their shortbread by hand, the row of colourful KitchenAid mixers on a back shelf standing at the ready but not put into use.

"We've been so pigeonholed as only cupcakes," McIntyre Jackson says. "And for a long time we were. We knew how to bake so many other things, but the demand for cupcakes was so high that we couldn't keep up; we didn't have time do anything else anyway."

Once they started opening new stores (they now have six four in Calgary, one in Edmonton and Saskatoon and 100 full- and part-time employees), more opportunities arose to play around with the other things they love to make.

Most recently, the revamping of their original Kensington shop expanded to include a small studio space with big block tables, where they sometimes hold baking classes, often with their mom, the source of many of their recipes. There is talk of a cookbook, perhaps in 2016. (The 4H Club cookbook they had as kids is still one of their favourites)

Everything from scratch

Even as they expand, their baked goods remain consistent. Everything is still made in small batches, all from scratch and they're constantly refusing offers of cake and other mixes from local suppliers.

"We do things the same way we always have the same way we were taught how to do it," McIntyre Jackson says.

Large windows at the back of the store allow customers to watch the baking process, feeling like they're right in the kitchen. The secret to their frosting? Butter, icing sugar and cream. Made in-store, not brought in on a truck.

"The peanut butter is peanut butter. The strawberry is strawberry puree. The lime is lime juice," Willoughby says.

Even the caramel icing is made with actual made-from-scratch caramel.

"Cupcakes have been around for a long time," Willoughby adds. "People keep saying they're a fad. Anything that tastes good is not a fad."

Crave's Shortbread

Carolyne and Jody shared their family shortbread recipe the same recipe Carolyne has been baking since she was 7.

1 cup butter

cup icing sugar

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1. Soften the butter by whipping it with your hand.
2. Add the icing sugar to the softened butter 1/3 at a time, mixing well with hand between each addition.
3. Continue to mix with your hand until the butter and sugar are very pale and warm to the touch.
4. Add the flour/cornstarch mixture to the butter/sugar mixture 1/3 at a time, mixing well with hand after each addition. ***You may not need all the flour***
5. The dough is done when it starts to pull away clean from the sides of the bowl and forms into a ball.
6. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to -inch thickness.
7. Use a 1 -inch cookie cutter to cut out cookies.
8. Place cut cookies on a large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
9. Use a fork to mark two sets of prints on each cookie.
10. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 163 C (325 F), until slightly golden on the bottom.