Oser Communications Group

bursting 26 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN Elizabeth Feinberg, Toffee Evangelist, Owner and Founder of Vermont Amber Organic Toffee won her first sofi Award this year with her Fennel Seed Toffee, which also won a Good Food Award in 2017. For the woman who'd left her early career as a veteran pastry chef at high- end hotels like the Arizona Biltmore, The Boulders Resort & Spa and others behind her to become a wife, mother and a kindergarten teacher, the awards were a welcome confirmation that the skilled pastry chef with the adventurous palate that she'd been once still has what it takes to stand with the best in the specialty food world. "I had forgotten what it was like to win awards for my creative endeavors with food," she said. "The Fancy Food Show dwarfs everything, but the Good Food Award was incredibly gratifying. It confirmed that the toffee is good.... It gave me the confidence that I could sell it more easily, and it gave buyers more confidence that they could sell it." I met Feinberg at the Specialty Food Association's press reception for this year's sofi Award winners during the Summer Fancy Food Show, after David Gremmels, who was there to celebrate the sofi Award he'd won for Rogue Creamery's Organic Rogue River Blue, demanded that I taste a piece of the Fennel Seed Toffee along with a bite of his cheese. When I agreed with him that the pairing brought out the light and floral notes of the cheese and then finished with a surprisingly long herbal note of fennel, he offered to take me over and introduce me to Elizabeth, leaving his own stand at the reception to make sure that I didn't miss the chance to write about Vermont Amber Organic Toffee. Feinberg's company will be three years old in November. "I started it, like many of my friends here in Vermont, in my house," she said. "I rented space for over a year and recently completed building my own commercial kitchen." She started the company after her job teaching kindergarten came to an end, and while she was looking around for something else to do, she started playing with the toffee that she'd been making for years as a Christmas gift for friends. She took some of her Salted Sesame Toffee to her local grocery co-op, where she was told that if she could make it organic, they'd carry it in the store. "The toffee proved to be outrageously delicious, and people loved it, so I started selling it," she said. From Salted Sesame, she started experimenting with other flavors that appealed to her own preference for interesting savory flavors, often finding her inspiration by wandering the aisles of that same grocery co-op. "It just kind of morphed from there. This is good; what else is going to be good?" she said. "I wander through the co- op, and flavors just sort of speak to me." She's now making her Organic Toffee in nine core flavors, including the Salted Sesame and the Fennel Seed, as well as a few seasonal flavors, including a Pumpkin Pie Toffee in the fall. Her Mothers Day toffee, Wow, Mom, is a melange of lemon, lavender, rose hips and vanilla wafers, and her toffee for Fathers Day, Roddad, includes pretzels, corn chips, onions and garlic. "Onions and garlic in toffee?" I couldn't resist asking, and I'm sure that my incredulity came through loud and clear. "You wouldn't have thought about fennel seed in toffee either," she responded. "Once I went off the edge with fennel seeds, the rest was really easy." She didn't stop with onions and garlic – another of her recent creations includes sun- dried tomatoes, smoked salt and black pepper. "I was walking through the co-op, and I grabbed a sun-dried tomato, and I thought, I can put this in toffee, so I did," she said. "It's out there. It hasn't caught on in the same way that the Fennel Seed Toffee caught on, but maybe it will." The tomatoes have a wonderful umami that they contribute an ingredient combination without being too sweet themselves, and surprising as it sounds, they really work in the toffee, she said, admitting that Tomato Terrific, the sun-dried tomato, smoked salt and black pepper toffee, doesn't sell itself off the shelf – it has to be sampled. "When you see the toffee, you'll probably buy Coconut because you understand coconut, and then you might buy the Sesame Seed because you understand sesame seed," she said. "It sells when I'm there.... It sells in cheese stores. It takes a special store to be able to market it in the way it needs to be marketed." Vermont Amber Organic Toffee is packaged for retail sale in 5- ounce and 1.25 ounce packages. The 5-ounce size bag, which retails for around $10, comes in a display box to sit on the store's counter, while the 1.25-ounce bags, which retail for $3, display well in a basket. Vermont Amber Organic Toffee is also available in bulk for use as an addition to cookies, granola, ice cream and more. Feinberg's current distributor makes the toffee available to retailers in Vermont, but Feinberg also ships wholesale orders directly to stores, and she's hoping that this year's sofi Award for the Fennel Seed Toffee will encourage retailers outside Vermont to take a chance on an exceptional product. Sweet/Savory Flavors the boundaries of

• Cover