On Boston Street, tucked between the Sip and Bite at one end of the block and the Gin Mill at the other, is Traditions by Pamela. From the front it looks like a gallery or an office.
Walk inside—and we strongly recommend that you do—and you will get the true picture. Pamela Skaw, known to friends as Penny, is a confectioner, and she is a virtuoso in chocolate.
The little display case is packed with handmade truffles and chocolates, custom cakes and other decadent delights. For the less formal, there are whoopie pies, densely chocolate flatcake sandwiches with a cream and marshmallow fluff center. Or chocolate chip cookies, or chocolate bark. There is plenty to choose from.
The cake truffles are the stars of the show. Cake truffles are moist pieces of cake dipped in chocolate. TBP specializes in red velvet cake truffles, a dark chocolate shell embracing a deep burgundy, cocoa-laced nugget of chiffon cake.
Traditions by Pamela
2216 Boston Street
410-675-2444
www.traditionsbypamela.com
Cake truffles: $1 each; 6 for $5.75; 12 for $10.80
If red velvet cake is not your thing, and there are about three people in the developed world that feel that way, try the lemon cake truffle, a moist, tart, citron-laced bit of cake enveloped in dark chocolate. Or you could try both.
Every few days there is a new truffle. “I am always experimenting,” says Penny. She is working on an Irish Mist truffle, suggested by the bartenders over at the Gin Mill, and she had just made a few Black Forest cake truffles to try out—but the neighbors bought them all before she could get a taste.
The folks over at V-No in Fells Point got her to try making a traditional chocolate truffle laced with chardonnay, dark, sweet chocolate infused with smooth white wine. She also makes truffles with pinot noir, créme de menthe and orange liqueur. She’s working on a peanut butter truffle, and after that will move on to Bailey’s Irish Cream.
Her husband, Gerry, makes the carrot cake, sweet, moist, cinnamony and nutmeggy, and frosted with a generous dollop of cream cheese icing. There is also a dark, nearly black, rich choolate fudge cake, and a red velvet cake. One slice is big enough for two.
Penny is half-Irish, half-Polish, grew up in Upper Fells Point and went to Sacred Heart of Jesus School. And while she is currently making all sorts of high-end, trendy candies and cakes, she is expressing her Polish roots with chruschiki, the little bowtie cookies dusted with confectioners’ sugar.
Her chruschiki crumble and melt in your mouth, a sign of a true, handmade chruschiki. She is also rolling out pierogi on Sundays, a move that she says is being enthusiastically received in East Baltimore, with its large Eastern European population. “Proud as I am of my Irish heritage, my Polish side has served me well,” she says.
For the moment, she’s a “nearly retired” paralegal, so she and Gerry get up at 4:30 a.m., arrive at the shop before 5:30 and bake till 8 and clean the kitchen; then she goes to her day job and comes back to the shop by 6 p.m. “We eat and sleep this shop,” she says. “We really are having a good time.”
V-No, on Ann Street Pier, sells a little plate of Penny’s wine-infused truffles for $5. Or you can pick anything you like from the display case at Traditions by Pamela. She also ships nationwide.
by Jacqueline Watts
editor@baltimoreguide.com
