A peek in the kitchen…

You might be surprised to learn that our most used copper jam pans come from a great California jam maker named Gillian Reynolds who ran Jamnation Co. for years. Gillian hung up the pans right about the same time V Smiley Preserves moved to a larger production kitchen (thus the need for bigger jam pans) while opening Minifactory (a cafe & market) in the same downtown Bristol, VT location. We were still in the pandemic and business was strong for V Smiley Preserves, so strong that we built Minifactory’s business plan (and a lot of debt servicing) on V Smiley Preserves’ growth. At the time, I contributed our ability to expand to my 8 years of bootstrapping, paying for PR rather than paying myself, investing deeply in photography, new website and lots of travel to national trade shows and craft shows around the Northeast. That investment and time spent was certainly key for developing V Smiley Preserves in the Northeast, but I think most packaged food and home goods businesses realize now that our growth was very pandemic driven and we now live in a different business landscape.

For me and V Smiley Preserves, 2023 has been about finding a new path based on the realities that have presented themselves with running two food businesses post-pandemic in rural Vermont. To me, the path is a re-investment in what we do; making super small batches, working with local fruit, digging deep into flavor construction (hoping to revive new flavor research & development in 2024) and connecting with you via our newsletter, at the farmers market and at Minifactory.

In that spirit, I thought we could hang out together in the kitchen for a day.

jam manufactury

V Smiley Preserves is produced using four 100,000 BTU “stock pot stoves” installed in the Minifactory kitchen. Until our move to 16 Main St, I cooked our preserves on burners ranging from 15,000 - 80,000 BTU’s, which meant the preserves cooked slower and the sugars developed more caramelization. Those small burners meant EVERYTHING took longer. Nowadays a batch of Strawberry Italian Plum Rosewater Jam can be on and off the stove in 20 minutes.

Minifactory is open Thursday-Monday. Then the jam crew, Evelyn and Cyd, show up and start their days in the kitchen. Jam making takes up lots of space and produces immense heat.

While initially I envisioned Minifactory visitors watching jam production from the dining room window, one summer attempting that made it clear we needed to change our production plan. The jam making tranformed the kitchen and dining room into an inferno so folks didn’t want to sit inside.

Day 1 of jam production is spent preparing the mixes that eventually come together in the copper pans and cook down into preserves. In the case of the Grape Jam, Day 1 is prepping the concord grapes. (We have a funny way of making grape jam at VSP where I use fruit butter methods—fruit cooked in water and food milled). Day 2 is heating that grape puree with honey and lemon, adding in our honey candied ginger, pouring all that into the copper pans and blasting the flame to get the mix up to boil. While it cooks down, I sanitize the jars and zest/juice the orange essences that get stirred in at the end of the grape jam cooking process.

Back, above, you can see Evelyn holding a very, very long spoon and stirring a Strawberry Blackcurrant Jam mix of fruit, honey and lemon juice that’s sat overnight doing what we call “maceration” - essentially a passive cooking-type process that draws out liquid from the fruit and helps create whole fruit and jammy spreadability.

Meet Evelyn & Cyd

Evelyn & Cyd work as a team to make the 40+ jams, marmalades, butters and conserves produced over the year.

They taste every single pot that comes off the stove, adjusting acidity, sweetness and any aromatics. Evelyn’s not a lavender fan so Cyd does the Lavender Blackberry Rhubarb tasting and Cyd always gets sneezy when it’s time to grind the chili peppers for Peach Bulgarian Pepper Tomato Jam and Smoky Spicy Tomato Jam, so Evelyn picks up that task.

The care they bring to this process is incredible, tracking how the honey is changing in flavor season to season, summer to fall and weaving together plum medleys to keep Strawberry Italian Plum Rosewater consistent, just to name a couple of the things on their mind as they race through their big production days.

Evelyn and Cyd, they make it happen!

I love the moments when I happen to be in the jam kitchen and we have a moment to taste the preserves together. Truly one of the best parts of the job—hearing what everyone is tasting, pausing to consider if anything is missing, or, what happens more often, we all just agree, “it tastes so good!!”

Minifactory

I started off thinking Minifactory’s pastry program should do three things: showcase preserves, serve special diets and crank out some laminated doughs. The preserves focus evolved over the first 9 months of business. I saw the preserves getting lost in the pastry case We didn’t have the bandwidth to draw detailed attention to the preserves. The whole marketing concept of tasting a jam in a cookie and wanting a customer to consider that jam for when they bake cookies or for their friend who bakes cookies, well, it just felt like we weren’t creating those connections via the pastry case. So we pulled it back and began to be more fruit focused, enjoying it as this multi-dimensional ingredient that we had great access to.

And Andrea has so many recipes, tools and talents that our pastry program is a constant, almost gasping conversation between multiple areas of interest; serving special diets, highlighting Andrea’s fabulous brioche donuts, conchas and cardamom buns, making sure we consistently have laminated (think croissant) products, having savory bakes for folks on the go who want deeper nourishment, bakes highlighting fabulous in-season fruit, minimizing food waste (using bar citrus for jam) and offering seasonal bakes (like Buche de Noels and cookie collections).

Andrea, Minifactory’s head pastry chef.

Above:

Biscuit Bostocks - a franken-pastry made from biscuit scrap and jam made with citrus leftover from the Minifactory bar juice. All topped with almond frangipane and slivered almonds.

Month by month, there are more fruit and preserves on the savory menu at V Smiley Preserves like the summer dish of ricotta with apricot dressed veggies and basil oil. For weeks we’ve been serving brassicas with various jams and melted cheeses.

Raspberry juice that drips off the raspberries served with our yogurt is used for icing little cakes.

All that to say, come visit! And share some jam with the bakers and cheese eaters in your life!