Gooey on Green Bluff
An enterprising dentist would be well-served setting up shop on Green Bluff next to Ellie Grubich.
Grubich is the Ellie behind Ellie’s Edibles, a candy shop specializing in fresh, gooey homemade caramel and other inventive treats based on the creamy confection.
She blends her signature recipe (a diet-friendly mixture of heavy cream, half-and-half, sugar and corn syrup) with Green Bluff fruit, lavender and nuts, as well as other ingredients, to create a gleaming candy case stocked with goodies.
Grubich started tinkering with caramel as a child, while growing up on a small farm in Anaconda, Mont.
“We were poor,” she says. “The only way we had candy was if I made them.”
Grubich and her husband, Bill, moved to Spokane from Seattle about eight years ago.
They now live on Green Bluff in the upstairs portion of the spacious home they built, which houses Ellie’s Edibles on the ground level.
“I fell in love with Green Bluff the first week I moved here,” she says. “I love being in trees picking fruit. I love farming. I just love that life.”
She opened her shop last fall, encouraged by success selling her candies at an area crafts fair. Now, she has trouble keeping up with demand. She makes about 180 pounds of caramel – candies and sauces – a week and is looking to expand so she can increase production.
Her candies are now available at the Simply Northwest store at the Spokane Airport, and they’re offered up to spa-goers at the Coeur d’Alene Resort. Her caramels sell for $20 a pound.
“We’re starting to do very well,” she says.
One of Grubich’s most-inventive and successful offerings is lavender-infused caramel, made with Fleur de Provence lavender from Green Bluff. She bottles lavender caramel sauce (perfect spooned over cheesecake, she says) and she makes lavender-spiked caramel candies drizzled with white chocolate or lemon coating.
Her caramel espresso bars, logs of caffeinated caramel covered in chocolate, have also been a big hit.
“We make hundreds and we’re always out of them,” Grubich says. “Even people who don’t like coffee like them.”
On Green Bluff, though, fresh produce is king. The locally grown fruits pair well with the caramel.
Each night, Grubich dehydrates a big batch of Green Bluff apples, which are then sliced in rings and drizzled with caramel. On the weekends, visitors can get a sliced fresh apple ladled with hot caramel right out of the pot.
“People really like the things that have fruit in them,” she says.