Cave to Co-op, December 2025

Each month, your Neighboring Food Co-ops feature our region’s artisan cheesemakers by offering a specially selected cheese at great price. Look for the “Cave to Co-op” sign in the cheese section at your local food co-op. To find one near you, visit www.nfca.coop/members. 

This month’s special cheese is Triple Crème from Champlain Valley Creamery, Middlebury, VT

With a graduate degree in Food Science and a background in wine making, Carleton Yoder moved to Vermont in the late 1990s to make hard apple cider. He took a year’s detour making farmstead Vermont cheddar at Shelburne Farms, and then decided to venture into cheesemaking on his own.

After a number of years in an old mill in Vergennes, where he carried countless full milk cans up countless flights of stairs, he finds himself in Middlebury making cheese. He still uses his traditional recipe but now with the aid of technology to move the milk cans around the creamery.

Champlain Valley‘s Triple Crème is crafted from certified-organic, grass-fed Jersey-milk with traditional techniques in a solar-powered facility. Their signature offering, the Organic Champlain Triple, is a sumptuous soft-ripened triple crème cheese — made from cultured whole milk and cream, ladled by hand into blocks and aged for roughly 10 days. With a rich, buttery interior and a delicate bloomy white rind giving subtle mushroom-and-earth notes. Triple Crème pairs well with sparkling wines, crisp dry cider or barrel-fermented Chardonnay and would be a luxurious addition to any cheese board along with honey or fig chutney, quince paste and fresh apples!

Try this recipe for a special holiday or family gathering adapted from PardonYourFrench.com.

Brie en Croûte with Cranberries, Nuts and Thyme

Featuring Champlain Valley Triple Crème

Ingredients:

• 1 (13 oz.) ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed
• 1 Champlain Valley Triple Crème cheese
• 2 TB honey
• ⅓ cup dried cranberries
• ¼ cup chopped nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts,
• almonds and/or pecans)
• 4 sprigs thyme, stemmed
• ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• Egg Wash: 1 egg yolk & 1 TB milk

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 425°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Unwrap your puff pastry and (if needed) roll it out and cut it into a large circle of 12-inch in diameter. Transfer the pastry onto the prepared baking sheet.
3. Fold the edges of the dough towards the center, up over the cheese, pleating the dough around as you go. Make sure the top center (where the pastry ends meet) is well sealed. Pull the final pleat a little more, so it goes over the cheese, to make sure it is well sealed.
4. Whisk together the milk and the egg yolk. Brush the top and sides of the pastry with the egg wash.
5. Transfer the pastry in the oven (middle rack). Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the pastry is just golden brown. Do not bake the pastry any longer, or the cheese may re-harden.
6. Let stand for 10-15 minutes, transfer onto a serving platter and serve immediately, with toasts and/or apple wedges.