Pastry chef and master preserver Camilla Wynne intertwines two passions in second cookbook
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Our cookbook of the week is Jam Bake by master preserver and pastry chef Camilla Wynne. To try a recipe from the book, check out: Strawberry and passion fruit jam; angel food cake; and angel biscuit donuts.
Intertwining baked goods and preserves comes naturally to Camilla Wynne. The Toronto-based pastry chef is one of Canada’s few master preservers and her second cookbook, Jam Bake (Appetite by Random House, 2021), revels in the overlap between the two. Her jam signature can be found in playful flavours, look and feel. Preserves — whether homemade or good-quality store-bought — shine in her creative bakes.
Wynne’s culinary career began with baking. After going to pastry school and gaining experience working at restaurants in Montreal, she began jarring her favourite fruits to use throughout the year (when she wasn’t touring with her band, Sunset Rubdown). In 2011, she founded Preservation Society: showcasing local Quebec produce in jams and other preserves, and teaching workshops.
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As someone who launched a company called Preservation Society (and wrote a book of a similar name, Preservation Society Home Preserves, in 2015), it may come as a surprise that Wynne isn’t one to eat jam straight-up on toast.
“I made jam for so many years — and saw it as a product and something I sold — that I got out of that habit of enjoying it, weirdly,” says Wynne, laughing. “But I always use it in baking because it’s so convenient. There’s so much concentrated fruit flavour there. So to me, (combining the two) just made a lot of sense. And surprisingly, no one has written a book about it before.”
Many of her Preservation Society clients would ask her what else they could do with their jams. Despite the plethora of jam-inflected treats — such as crostata, Pop-Tarts, rugelach, Sachertorte and thumbprint cookies, all of which make appearances in the book — people tended to start and end with spreading it on toast.
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Baking with jam is a well-established tradition, and for Wynne, it revolves around an adoration of fruit. “I love fresh fruit. And the reason I love jam is because I love fruit, but there’s something about cooking it down with sugar … that makes it a really powerful ingredient in baking.”
When Wynne left Montreal for Ontario in 2018, she closed the production side of Preservation Society and returned to working in pastry. She may no longer sell preserves, but her passion for making them lives on — as does the satisfaction she gets from teaching others how to do the same.
Having started out as a self-taught preserver, Wynne didn’t intend to become an instructor, but it’s now one of her favourite occupations. Her independent research into the science of food preservation raised more questions than answers in terms of safety and best practices. “You’ll get a book from Britain and then you’ll get a book from America, and they have totally different methods,” says Wynne of the decision to formalize her education.
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She completed a Master Preservers course in Liberty, N.Y. and attended classes on artisanal preserving at the Institute of Agriculture and Technology in Saint-Hyacinthe, Que. Promoting an understanding of the science of preserving is now the backbone of her teaching style.
“That really became my pedagogical method, was to start by explaining to people why we do what we do,” says Wynne. “It’s like junior high science: It’s really easy, anyone can get a handle on it. But if you understand the principles behind it, then you’re not going to make a mistake that could endanger the safety of your preserves.”
To that end, Wynne opens Jam Bake with a primer on the art and science of preserving — “microbiology lite, the mystery of pectin and the streamlined canning process” — followed by an overview of baking principles.
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Food preservation is rife with misunderstanding, she says, and it goes both ways: some people are inordinately afraid and others aren’t concerned enough. Once people understand the science behind preserving fruit, she says, they can then begin to put their own mark on it — but only within the confines of what’s safe.
In Jam Bake, Wynne presents her recipes in three categories: Standalones, starring a single fruit; Duets, featuring pairings; and Containing Multitudes, “all my weird concoctions.” She offers store-bought substitutes (and a guide to buying quality jam), as well as other preserve options from the book for each baking recipe. In addition, she includes a “choose your own adventure” chart and base recipe for creating custom jam.
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“I appreciate that some people are just like, ‘No, I want to follow recipes. It’s going to work and that I trust.’ And I’m like, ‘Great, thank goodness for you actually, because I write recipes for my job,’”’ she laughs. “But I want people to understand that also, they can do it, too. They can make up their own signature flavour and that’s the fun.”
Wynne’s approach is sensory and visceral. She plays with textural contrasts — apricot and cocoa nibs, strawberry and passion fruit (the seeds bring the crunch) — and colour; draws on taste memories and perceptions; and takes inspiration from her grandmothers’ old recipe books.
In creating her Le Tigre Marmalade — made with star anise-scented tangerines — she tapped into a nostalgic childhood favourite: tiger tail ice cream. She translated a classic cocktail into her Cherry Negroni Jam and focused on colour in her Tutti Frutti Jam, which features stone fruit and berries on the white-to-orange spectrum. A retelling of the classic German cake, her Black Forest Jam — with cherry, kirsch, vanilla and chocolate flavours intact — provokes thought by coming in an unexpected package.
Such deconstructions are a callback to the early 2000s and her days of working in fine-dining restaurants: breaking down desserts to their core elements while ensuring they were still coherent.
“I’m often making my attempt to do that through preserves, and I think that’s partly because I did work in fine dining for quite a while before starting my company,” says Wynne. “Just making preserves could have felt a little bit limiting — I was used to having access to all these different flavours and textures. So it was important to me to be able to bring those things into creating jams.”
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With Jam Bake, you can have your preserves and eat them too - National Post
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