Canadian Gift Guide

I happen to be someone that’s half-decent in the kitchen, to the point where I surprise myself at how overwhelmingly quickly people gobble up the treats I bring to potlucks, the office, or special events. The problem is this has created some level of expectation surrounding my culinary prowess. Sometimes I think it’d be easy to be the person who claims they’ve got no skills in the kitchen whatsoever, in which case they can get away with toting a box of Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co.‘s delicious treats.

Despite being a ‘store-bought’ brand, you can rest assured the shortbread concocted by this Canadian kitchen is as close to homemade as you can get. They create fresh cookie dough and bake it on a daily basis to ensure they get it to their retailers as quickly as possible – at least on a far shorter lifespan than your average box of Oreos.

Available in classic sweet, savoury cheese-based, and liquor-infused variety, the shortbread cookies have a delightfully simple mandate: all natural ingredients. That means no heavy oils or trans fats, and a pleasantly short ingredient list, typically of five ingredients or less.

Thanks to the nature of shortbread, each box actually has a shelf life of 8 months – meaning you can indulge the occasional temptation over a long period of time instead of feeling obligated to scarf an entire box in one sitting. Although I wouldn’t blame you if you tried. At $8 a box, you get two dozen cookies, easily enough to share if brought as a hostess gift to the next baby shower, engagement party, or birthday you attend.

The Sprucewood website lists out all the places you can snap these shortbread delights up by region, but independent Canadian retailer Tweed & Hickory offers them online if you’re desperate to have them shipped to your door on the ASAP.