Sweet Beat

Beard Award-Winning Pastry Chef Nicole Plue Launches Sideshow, a Hand-Crafted Sweets Company

Nicole Plue
Nicole Plue

Nicole Plue, most recently the pastry chef at Cyrus (now closed) and a 2010 James Beard Award winner for Best Pastry Chef for her work at Redd, has just launched her own line of hand-crafted sweets called Sideshow. Plue says, “What makes any dessert great is texture and balance,” and hence her products ride the line between salty and sweet, and crispy and crunchy. Take, for instance, her Saltine toffee, which is literally Saltine crackers topped with salted butter toffee, bittersweet chocolate, and roasted almonds. Then you have her Salted Peanut ice cream topping, which is a mix of feuilletine, milk chocolate, peanut butter, peanuts, salt. She’s also got a jarred ice cream topping based on Cocoa Puffs. All of it comes in neat packages, perfect for gift giving, so there’s that to consider too. [SF Mag, Tasting Table]

Beard Award-Winning Pastry Chef Nicole Plue Launches Sideshow, a Hand-Crafted