Thoughtfully saving their customers the cost of last-minute trips to Germany and Italy, the artisan bakers at City Bakery are offering traditional European holiday breads this December. Bakery co-owner Craig Peters suggests calling ahead to claim your loaf of stollen, a lightly sweetened German fruitcake, or panettone, a fluffy, long-proofing Milanese bread shaped like a Medieval pope’s cap. City Bakery has two Asheville locations, at 60 Biltmore Ave. (252-4426) and 88 Charlotte St. (254-4289).
Fruitcake isn’t just a punch line this holiday season: It’s a tasty way to support women’s shelters in Western North Carolina. Both Earth Fare locations in Asheville are offering all-natural fruitcakes baked by Women Helping Other Women, a Burnsville nonprofit serving women displaced by job loss or domestic violence. Sales and marketing director Troy DeGroff praised the organization, which will prepare 10,000 pounds of cake this holiday season, for using all-natural ingredients. “Until they started producing their cakes in 2004, an all-natural fruitcake was impossible to come by,” he noted in a release.
Many of the Blue Ridge Food Ventures products profiled in the recent Xpress Holiday Guide are now available online in gift-basket form. Visit www.awellstockedbasket.com to choose from five baskets, priced from $21.95 to $79.95, stuffed with BRFV items. A portion of the proceeds from baskets sold will be used to support the nonprofit organization, which provides commercial kitchen space and other support to culinary entrepreneurs.
Arden’s Young Chefs Academy, one of 155 franchised cooking schools for children, is offering a cooking lesson with Santa this Saturday. For $29, children can learn to make a Denver omelet and cereal muffin and, of course, meet St. Nick. No word on whether he plans to help clean up. The class runs from 10 a.m. to noon. For more information, call 651-CHEF.
