Edible Notables: Mavericks Treats
Think about what your favourite summer treat was as a child; there’s a pretty good chance you’re conjuring an image of a deliciously sticky popsicle in any manner of fruit flavours. Popsicles are a summer essential for keeping cool in the heat—but there’s a lot more to making a quality popsicle than you might expect.
Daniel Crossin of Mavericks Treats knows all the tricks to making a perfectly juicy, flavourful popsicle that kids and adults will look forward to all summer. Prior to launching his popular frozen dessert company, he graduated from the Vancouver Culinary School in 2007, and his resume since is filled with impressive accomplishments in the field from around the world—including the UK, Tokyo, Copenhagen, San Francisco, New York and Vancouver. The inspiration for a frozen dessert cart didn’t come until after moving to Salt Spring Island, but the foundation was laid in Vancouver when they regularly saw a. paleta cart along the English Bay Seawall. “I started thinking about family trips I had taken to Mexico as a kid, there was such a nostalgia for the fresh fruit flavours,” Daniel recalls. Then after they moved to Salt Spring Island, he quickly noticed the abundance of farm-fresh fruit available, and Mavericks Treats was born in 2019.
“As a chef, I was drawn to the challenge of how to make something so simple taste as good as possible,” Daniel explains. “Popsicles are surprisingly difficult to make well.” One of the first things he had to consider was that to make a truly delicious popsicle, you need quite fine ice crystals. This requires a machine that can rapidly freeze the popsicles. And, of course, sourcing flavourful fruit is paramount to the final result. “I source fruit and produce from Salt Spring Island whenever I can—strawberries, rhubarb, plums, raspberries, apple, sorrel—and from BC otherwise—cherries, peaches, nectarines, melons,” Daniel says. “I import whole vanilla beans and high quality dark chocolate, and use local organic milk and cream.”
Daniel creates all of the product recipes, makes the bases, does the small-batch freezing, packages and labels each item himself. He found he was surprised at how much time goes into the logistical side of the business, and not just the product creation. “I was so initially focused on making products that looked and tasted amazing, but creating a great product is only about 20% of the work,” he says. “Developing the branding and designing packaging, coordinating wholesale accounts, making labels, the whole logistical end of the company is also run by me alone, and that is a portion of the business that has really surprised me because I've had to learn as I go.”
But it’s all worth it for the creative side. He’s always coming across new, local ingredients and experimenting with new flavours, like the Apple Sorrel popsicle. “I wasn't sure if that would work out, but I found some beautiful sorrel and when I paired that with the apple, it came out in the most striking green colour and it just worked really well.” The fruit he uses also has to be exceptionally flavourful, or else the final product won’t be. “When fruit is frozen, your taste buds can't detect the flavours as well, as there's no aroma,” Daniel explains. “So I have to find the most intense overripe flavours possible. It's exciting to talk to the farmers who have ugly fruit available (the non-perfect looking fruit that they can't usually sell to the public), because that usually tastes the best.”
Daniel sells his popsicles from his icicle trike, which was made specifically for their launch in 2020, and has become a popular destination at the Saturday Market on Salt Spring Island. With his products growing in popularity and his passion for the popsicle, Daniel hopes to expand to more locations in future and develop a line of hero products available throughout the year, so you don’t have to wait for a hot summer day to indulge in a fruity, refreshing frozen treat.
Photos by Brette Little
