all about cmbsweets

cmbsweets was born on a foggy San Francisco morning in a studio apartment sandwiched between the Mission and Twin Peaks.

When Carolina came home from the farmer’s market loaded with a bushel of strawberries, she dipped a few in her morning yogurt. She ate a few more in the afternoon. She gave a basket to her neighbors, and brought a few more to a friend’s house for a barbeque. But there’s only so much a single girl can do with too many strawberries. So she did what any other sensible girl might: grabbed the sugar, one very big pot and a handful of recipes, and out came the first bath of cmbsweets’ jam. Her friends each got a jar; she passed a few on to her unsuspecting coworkers and then brought a batch over to a certain 16th street bar.

The crowd went wild. They wanted more.

Soon Carolina was using that same big pot to cook up apricots and figs and peaches and raspberries and began selling her jam all over town. Now, a year-and-a-half later, cmbsweets’ line of all-natural jams, jellies and sweets includes a dozen flavors — from pomegranate jelly to kiwi-lime-ginger preserves to olallieberry jam— and is available at markets across the country.

While cmbsweets has grown out of Carolina’s studio apartment, its homemade style and flavor hasn’t changed. The company uses only locally grown seasonal fruits, scouring farmers’ markets throughout Northern California for small family farms that offer the freshest, tastiest produce.

cmbsweets' strawberries, for example, come from Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville. Vince Gizdich’s family has been farming the same piece of land for three generations. The best fruit makes the best jam, and Gizdich’s berries are so good that Sunset Magazine named cmbsweets’ strawberry jam “The Best of the West” in June 2006. Twin Hill Organic Farms in Sebastapol supplies the fujis for the apple-honey butter, and every batch is sweetened with Wildflower honey produced by Eggman Family Farms in Terra Bella. Kashiwase Farms grows California’s plumpest apricots. cmbsweets adds a touch of almond extract and a bit of sugar to create a jam that tastes as fresh as the fruit off the tree.

All of cmbsweets’ products are made with fruit, sugar and lemon juice— nothing else. Much of the fruit is organic. There’s no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. The idea is to make fancy California food without the fancy California food price.

Taste some. It's really good.

Just ask Becky.

"Catchy names like Bodacious Boysenberry, Prissy Li'l Pomegranate and Raspberry Retainer made us try all seven of the samples by the spoonful. Each was unique and delicious.”

-- Rebecca Williams, Food Writer
San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 2006

Or Kate.

"Carolina Braunschweig's raspberry jam tastes like a hot, sunny day in the mountains. Its heady, pure raspberry flavor carries a Proustian punch, instantly transporting all who have ever picked berries back to the briar patch of their youth. That clarity of flavor, along with Braunschweig's judicious use of sugar, her jams have far less than commercial brands but enough to give the perfect sweetness, make cmbsweets jams as close to homemade as you'll find.."

--Kathryn Jessup, Lifestyle Editor
Diablo Magazine, June 2006

Becky and Kate aren’t cmbsweets’ only fans. cmbsweets recently delivered 30 pounds of pomegranate jelly to the pastry chefs at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco for their fall-themed wedding cakes and pastries. It’s available at specialty food shops, wine stores and upscale supermarkets all over the country. It’s also available online at www.cmbsweets.com.

For more information, please contact Carolina Braunschweig at jamgirl*at*cmbsweets*dot*com or at (917) 783-6370.