Bluffton Farmers Market is the place to be on Saturday mornings in town. According to the Bluffton Area Chamber of Commerce, our town "boast the best farmers market in northwest Ohio." 

In celebration of our small but mighty farmers market, the Icon will be featuring a vendor each week over the course of the summer.

This week's feature vendor is Sweet Dream Gourmet.

Julie Brown is the owner of Sweet Dream Gourmet, specializing in jams, jellies and biscotti.

Brown was watching the news one day, and heard about a lady in Columbus who made biscotti and jam to sell to support her family, after her husband lost his job. Since Brown had time on her hands with her kids away at college, she thought to herself, "I could do that!" And she certainly has - Sweet Dream Gourmet has been selling homemade biscotti and preserves at Bluffton and Findlay Farmers Markets for eight years now.

Brown said "I've always had a passion for baking and putting up preserves," which she learned from her grandmother. Her preserves have one blue ribbons at Allen County Fair.

Brown offers both traditional and unique flavors. Her strawberry jam is chock full of mouth-wateringly red strawberries, and it sells out fast, as well as her ginger peach. But she also has unique flavors, such as fig jam and jalapeno jelly. (Note, she offers free samples of all her preserves at Saturday's market.)

Her jams are also quite versatile - Brown suggests using her ginger peach preserve, among others, as a marinade on chicken.

If you bring back your jar with the original "Sweet Dream Gourmet" label intact, you will receive 50 cents for every jar returned.

Sweet Dream Gourmet also offers a dozen or more flavors of biscotti to choose from. Biscotti is Italian for cookie, often referring to a twice-baked cookie or biscuit. These baked goodies are typically dry and can be stored for long amounts of time. However, if you've ever tried a dry, tooth-shattering biscotti from a national chain coffee shop, you need to scrap what you know about biscotti and try one of Brown's variety at Sweet Dream Gourmet.

Brown has a gift for flavor, such as combining orange and cardamon or ginger and peach. The most popular flavor she offers is turtle biscotti, which has caramel baked into the dough, and topped with chocolate and pecan. Brown also has two gluten-free flavors, lemon and almond or orange and cardamon, which are very popular. You can eat them like cookies on their own or dip them in your favorite beverage.

Brown says the trick with biscotti is to bake it on each side: she bakes each batch in a loaf tin, and then slices them and puts them bake in the oven to bake on each side, which takes 45 minutes to an hour per batch. Her husband, Jo, says he has the "nicest smelling house in the neighborhood" on baking days.

To place an order, discuss delivery options or get additional information, contact Brown at [email protected] or call 567-204-5065. She also takes special orders.

About the Bluffton Farmer’s Market
This story is part of a summer series on Bluffton Farmer’s Market vendors. The market is open each Saturday through the end of October from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Citizens National Bank parking lot, 102 S. Main St. For vendor information contact Greg Probst, director, at [email protected].

Next week's vendor featured will be Revive Coffee Co.