President’s Choice Recipe to Riches Mini Cheesy Bees’ Nest

Lucky me! I got to try the winning product for the Recipe to Riches desserts category right away. The winner is Jay Keary of Nerepis, NB, and his recipe was for Mini Cheesy Bees’ Nests.

I love his heavy metal rock star attitude and totally disagree with the marketing group who insisted “bees’ nest” was unappealing. I think it works with his tough musical lifestyle and I am glad he stuck with it in the end.

When I opened the box though, I was confused. I did not remember the product containing berries. In fact, at first I thought it was apple (that is what happens when you tweet during the show, not going to do that again).

I re-watched the episode and I was kind of right. He did not make his with berries. He made them with peaches. In the video on how they mass produced his recipe, they said they tried to keep its essence but that is a huge change.

I think going for a one-bite-sized portion was smart and making many layers with the phyllo to keep that wild nest look to them was great. The mozzarella doesn’t seem to want to stay on top of the nests though.

It did keep falling off and I kept putting it back on. Not a big deal though but I was still perplexed about the berries.

It is true that they are not super sweet and have a savoury edge thanks to the cream cheese and mozzarella. Beautiful crunch, the flavour is divine. I could eat this whole box. Unfortunately I could not taste the honey that the judges really noticed. I think if they had stayed with peaches I would have noticed it more. The berry flavour is very strong and brings a lot of visual appeal, something the original recipe did not have.

I feel at odds about reviewing this recipe. The original did not score well with the taste testers and yet it won and now it is very different than the original recipe. I can say the store-bought version is delicious but if I were Jay, I would probably not be happy at the major flavour profile change. It would not feel as much like my recipe but he did really think out of the box and I am glad such a great guy won.

I give this store-bought product four and a half out of five wooden spoons.