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What began as a way for Georgina Schneider to appease her nephews’ hunger for caramel apples has grown into one of Hollister’s most delightful confectioneries, Sour Sweet Treats, co-owned by her husband, Michael Schneider.
Serving raspados, acai and sorbet bowls, fresh-baked cookies and a variety of Dubai chocolate treats—among other things—the common theme throughout the menu is quality, bold flavor, and homemade goodness.
The request for apples from her nephews was just as much a reflection of economics as it was a love of Georgina’s confectionery skills. Candy apples were just too expensive for the boys to indulge in as much as they might like, so she acquiesced to their pleas.
“They really wanted them,” she said, “so I told them, ‘No, I’m going to make some for you guys.’ Then they started saying, ‘Tia, you have to sell these to the neighbors and everybody.’ So it started as a joke.”
For Georgina, it was a tempting idea. Her occupation as a hairstylist made work during the COVID-19 pandemic a hit-or-miss affair, as shops opened and closed amid shutdowns. She was, she said, “getting anxious to get out there and get close to people again.”
For Michael, who worked in quality control at Marich Confectionery for 12 years, one of the key factors in Sour Sweet Treats’ characteristically superior products, it was a chance to stretch his wings with a new business in partnership with his wife.
“I had time after work,” he said, “so in 2020, we started with candy apples, selling them on the corner by Hollister High School. We would just set up an A-frame and table with the apples and Chamoy gummies. It became a habit that turned into a hobby that became our business.”
They quickly expanded into their own line of apples, with a kaleidoscope of flavors including cinnamon, peanut, chamoy, dark chocolate, rocky road, Oreo, M&Ms, almond toffee, the classic caramel and more, working out of the El Pájaro Commercial Kitchen in Watsonville.
But they soon got antsy for a brick-and-mortar of their own; something that would allow for more products and give them a fixed location their regular customers could find more easily.
“We wanted more to offer than just candy apples,” Michael said. “And having a designated space would simply allow us to do everything we wanted to do here that we couldn’t do out there.”
The move to a small shop across the street from the San Benito County courthouse was a true leap of faith, but Michael said it was fueled largely by Georgina’s confidence in the business.
“My wife,” he said, ‘she believed hard enough for both of us. She said, ‘Let’s do this. If we don’t try, we’ll never know. Let’s take the risk and take it positively, and let’s see what’s going on.’ That helped us grow to where we are now and where we want to see ourselves in the future.”
The move was also inspired by a desire to move into traditional Mexican raspados, shaved ice, which was otherwise too complicated to do outside of a shop. The modest kitchen area allowed them to make most of their own syrups, sourced from fresh fruits that change with the seasons.
They can be as easy to produce as soaking blocks of tamarind paste or hibiscus flowers to extract the flavors, then boiling them down. Or it can be more complex, such as preparing guava from fresh fruit.
“We rinse all the fruits before cooking,” Georgina said, “ but after that, with guava, it’s a little bit harder because we have to take every seed. Then we have to cut it, boil it and make sure it is sweet enough for our customers.”
The raspados, like many of the dishes at Sour Sweet Treats, are seasonal and rotate through flavors such as blackberry, passion fruit, strawberry, mango, pecan, banana, pineapple, coconut, guava, kiwi, tamarindo, raspberry, blueberry and hibiscus.
Most of the time, they can translate their dream flavors into reality, such as guanabana (soursop), a traditional Mexican fruit that Georgina recalls from her youth. Others, like an experiment with a pistachio syrup, have not quite worked out even after struggling to perfect the recipe.
“If you add something citric to milk,” Michael said, “it curdles. The first time with pistachio, it did something like that to the milk, making it curdle. We tried it again, and it worked. We gave out little samples, but it never caught on. It’s always a learning experience.”
The biggest hit so far, however, is the Dubai bowls, with fresh strawberries topped with chocolate, crushed pistachios and house-produced toasted wheat kataifi and pistachio cream. There are also variations, such as a Dubai milkshake.
“It became viral,” Michael said, “and you know, people keep coming back. I think if you asked people in Dubai, they’d say, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But people around here love it.”
Another popular item is the bowlables, packed with fresh fruit and nutrient-dense ingredients. There are different bases: acai, dragon-fruit, matcha, mango-pineapple, passion fruit and coconut-pineapple.
“I think these will be big for people who are more health-conscious,” Michael said, “these would be the ones to get. The fruits all have sugar, but it’s natural, so it’s not so bad. And they are totally customizable.”
And customize away: besides the half-dozen base ingredients, there’s a plethora of add-ons, including kiwi, grapes, Nutella, peanut butter, almond butter, chocolate chips, chia seeds and more.
The version pictured in this article starts with coconut-pineapple, which derives its color from a scoop of spirulina, and includes granola, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, honey, coconut flakes, and goji berries.
“Feast for the eyes” may be cliché, but this dish adds up to it with a 4th of July-ready patriotic explosion of vibrant red, white and blue. And the flavor is just as ballistic, bright and perfectly balanced.
The commitment to health is apparent in other items in the menu as well, from the fresh-boiled, never-canned Mexican-style street corn, cooked and cut from the cob at the shop and then doused with mayonnaise, cotija cheese, and a choice of chili powder, Tapatio or Valentina.
Even the lemonade is made from fresh-squeezed lemons, which Michael says is critical to maintaining the flavor. And, as part of a move to include some less-sugar-oriented items on the menu, it can be ordered in a low-calorie Stevia version.
“Everybody loves candies, chocolates, sweets,” Georgina said, “so we are searching for something healthier, like that, for people who suffer from diabetes or people who can’t consume a lot of sugar.”
Plans for the future might include a return to the Farmers Market and a food truck, dependent on staffing, but for the moment, the couple is very content.
“We love bringing foods here from around the world,” Georgina said. “We like to make people feel more connected. We’ve had people from other countries who say, ‘I haven’t had this in a while. Oh my goodness, your place has it.’”
Sour Sweet Treats
396 4th St, Hollister
(831) 537-1274
Hours: Monday – Saturday, 12-8 p.m.
Sour Sweet Treats can be found on Instagram and Facebook
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and for giving our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
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