Stonetown Treats making spring a bit sweeter

Sadie Martin, owner of Stonetown Treats, and her son, Devin Martin.

By Emily Stewart

Sadie Martin, owner of Stonetown Treats, always enjoyed baking.

Her passion came from a young age, learning from her grandmother, Sally Benny, who was well known in Thorndale for her baking and especially her butter tarts. Benny won prizes for her baked goods at the Thorndale Fair and always gave back to the community and her church.

“Baking just always gave me a lot of joy because of the connection to my grandmother and it’s just a way for people to connect, and I just think that it’s really lovely,” Martin said.

Martin also learned some baking techniques on her own and can usually be found in the kitchen baking goodies for events like family gatherings, including birthday cakes.

“My favourite time of year is Christmastime for baking because I can just go all out and do big platter trays for my family and my friends,” she said. “I’ve never baked professionally before, so it’s all very new. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out the ins and outs.”

For a while, other family members encouraged her to pursue something further with baking. After talking about it for months with her sister-in-law, the two are renting a commercial kitchen where Martin does all the baking.

“It just kind of spiraled from there and I just kind of jumped in,” Martin said.

In a short time, Martin had to get a safe food handler’s certificate and contact the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to find out the restrictions as a home baker. For now, she doesn’t have to worry about labelling or ingredients as it’s on a pre-order basis, but she cannot make desserts with cream cheese, custard, or whipped cream.

“Working within the restrictions is hard. A good example is the cupcakes in that I have to use a buttercream that is at least 65 per-cent sugar for it to fall into the home-baked goods (category) so it is a sweeter buttercream,” she said. “Again, it limits my options a little bit, but I’m doing my best to work around it and put out the best stuff I can.”

Ultimately, Martin would like to have a permanent location to do her baking and become a farmers market vendor, but she will be focusing on creating goodies for pre-order in the meantime.

Stonetown Treats had its first pre-order and cookie drop for Easter and it was successful.

“I had a lot of orders and the response was very very nice; a lot of people had very nice things to say,” Martin said.

There will be a Mother’s Day treat drop on May 9 that features vanilla cupcakes in a floral design, lemon cupcakes, strawberry shortcake cupcakes and Biscoff cupcakes, along with a mixed-treat box.

The Mother’s Day mixed treat box will have mint-chocolate cookies, a strawberry chocolate blondie, a sugar-cookie bar, a caramel-crunch brownie and a cranberry coconut white-chocolate bar. Orders will be accepted until May 5, or until sold out.

To place an order with Stonetown Treats online, either send a direct message to the Stonetown Treats Facebook page or email stonetowntreats@outlook.com.