Twilight Farm Shoppe Joins the Sonker Trail

Twilight Farm Shoppe, which has shared a Main Street storefront in Mount Airy with Prudence McCabe Confections for many years, recently replaced the confectionary on the Surry Sonker Trail.

Twilight specializes in baked goods, making it ideal for the trail when Prudence McCabe closed upon the retirement of owner Sue Heckman. The entire space was then renovated into Hundley’s General Store.

Twilight owner Amy Bryant is excited to continue the legacy of fresh-baked sonker at 192 North Main Street in Mount Airy. Bryant appreciates the history of this heritage dessert found only in Surry County and serves her own style adapted from a recipe passed down to her father-in-law by his great-grandmother.

“I use all fresh fruit, a lot of it from The Farm in Dobson and my husband and I grow blueberries as well,” Bryant says. “My recipe is a combination of flour, sugar and egg crumbled together and then I add melted butter on top before baking, so it sinks down into the fruit but also creates a nice crust on top.”

Bryant will flavor her sonker based on what’s in season, using a rotation of peach, blackberry, strawberry, blueberry, apple and pumpkin pecan. She’s even considering cranberry sonker for the wintertime.

Each sonker is individually baked and served in a 4.5-inch diameter tin that’s easy to transport.

“We get a lot of tourists who usually have gone somewhere local for lunch and don’t necessarily want it right away, so I wanted to make it easy to take with them,” Bryant says.

One of her unique creations is pumpkin pecan sonker.

“For pumpkin pecan, I take the pumpkin puree, sweeten it with a little bit of maple syrup, and then add pecans. I use the same crumble topping as my other sonkers, but mix pecans and cinnamon in with it,” says Bryant. “It has been a big hit.”

Twilight Farm Shoppe customers can also purchase artisan sourdough breads, cakes, cookies, brownies, cream horns and other baked goods. Bryant likes being a part of the general store, which has an old-fashioned theme that is a great fit for the Sonker Trail.

• For a Sonker Trail map and more info, go online to: www.SonkerTrail.org.