Five fun facts about Milène from Sophie Sucrée

This week’s post is to remind you of how awesome our suppliers are! This week, we chatted with Milène from Sophie Sucrée about her amazing 100% vegan and certain gluten-free baked goods.

Sophie Sucrée’s name was inspired by Milène’s grandma Sophie, who founded the bakery in 2010 as a one woman show. Milène traded her mathematics degree for a baking apron. As time went by and Milène’s baked goods started getting noticed in Montreal, she opened her full storefront in 2013. “A constant discovery in progress”, is how Milène describes Sophie Sucrée. With a team mainly composed of vegan enthusiasts, everyone pitches in when it comes to recipe creation and an occasional game of devil’s advocate. When I asked Milène what she does for fun, she said, “cake!”.

Here are 5 fun facts about Milène:

Why did you leave Mathematics?

I learned a lot from my grandmother, Sophie, and eventually interned with someone who primarily made wedding cakes. While doing this, I was attending university, and working at a job I found unfulfilling. I really loved mathematical theory but couldn't see myself making a career of it. Eventually, I decided that I would be much happier making cakes for people. In 2010, the original Sophie Sucrée was born. In 2013, the opportunity arose to open a retail store front, which was perfect, as we were becoming more dedicated to an all vegan business, as well as perfecting our desserts. From that point on, we were 100% vegan, with a focus on gluten free recipes where feasible.

So why vegan?

We want everyone to be able to enjoy our food.  The vegan diet tends to avoid most things that people regularly avoid for health or ethical reasons.  Most of our customers are not vegan themselves, they just like what they taste.  We love that, but we're very happy that people who are lactose intolerant, or choose to not eat animal products, or avoid gluten, can also partake in our sweets. Plus, a lot of our team is vegan, and they want to eat our sweets too!

How do you manage to make vegan and gluten free pastries so good?

It took a lot of testing, and a refusal to compromise the taste under the excuse of "well it's vegan". We have a great team of people, and we're all capable of being critical of our recipes.  Most importantly, we never want to serve something that we don't find tasty ourselves.

What do you love the most about your days?

My favourite part of the day is eating, so when I have a moment to sit and enjoy one of the treats, fresh out of the oven, it really is a great pleasure.

What’s next for Sophie Sucrée?

More products. In the short term, we're looking to create some wonderful new breakfast items. In the longer term, we'd love to have more places for customers to get our products.

Happy eating!