Sisters hope to sweeten up the holidays with their New West business

The word "trove" refers to "a store of valuable or delightful things," and the definition is perfection when it comes to Karl Stol and Julia Witter's New West-based business.

The sisters run Trove Desserts, a company that specializes in dessert boxes and boards—though they also sell cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and squares to order.

"We'd always done a lot of baking at home and had so much great feedback from family and friends saying, 'Oh, you guys need to sell this!'" explains Stol. "We just had enough positive reinforcement and encouragement that we thought, 'Hey, maybe we should. It's now or never,' you know?"

The venture began in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Witter, really assessing whether it'd be worth starting a dessert business somehow felt right.

"I know everything else in the world was going crazy, but at the same time [it made us] re-evaluate, 'OK, what are we doing? Do we like what we are doing?' We had this dream, so may as well give it a shot at this point," says Witter.

Stol was working in the cruise ship industry managing logistics; Witter was a sales rep who worked with convenience stores.

Witter had been temporarily laid off from her job, which is when she says the conversations with her sister about baking full time started to shift. When they began to give it a go, they experienced a little bit of everything: some days it felt great, while other days they'd think, "What did we get ourselves into?"

"We'd always been talking about baking and our family [is full of] bakers," says Witter, who adds it's common to see a spread of cakes and other desserts during get-togethers. "We already had lots of recipes that we loved, and then ... once we kind of got started, we're like, 'Hey. How are we actually going to do this?'"

By December 2020, the duo launched their first run of the Christmas box—every little nook and cranny is filled with an array of sweet treats, including shortbread, ginger eggnog sandwich cookies, and fudge brownies.

Witter and Stol say they're not afraid to try new things, either—you can get their Nanaimo bars in three options: original, cappuccino, and raspberry.

"In terms of flavour combinations and creativity, I think we perfected a few recipes that we had, and then Valentine's Day for instance we thought, 'Let's try making a pink Nanaimo bar.' We did some raspberry in there and suddenly that spun into a collection of all kinds of flavours of Nanaimo bars," says Stol.

If you can't commit to one sweet treat, both recommend grabbing a box or a platter.

"You get to try a ton of different flavours, and what we always say is that if you're bringing it to a gathering, there's something for everyone there," says Stol.

If you'd rather leave the baking to someone else this holiday season, Stol and Witter hope you'll check out their website.