How a ‘Secret Garden’ in Highland Park Changed an Actress's Life and Fortunes

Shortly before actress Hillary Danner had her second child about five years ago, she moved down the street into a 1904 Arts and Crafts-style house in Sycamore Grove Park that had a half-acre backyard garden lush with vegetation.

Hidden from public view and located under the shadow of the Southwest Museum, the garden had numerous fruit trees, “which seemed so fantastic until the fruit all started to ripen and fall down,” recalls Danner, adding: “I felt horrible guilt because I couldn’t eat the fruit or get rid of it fast enough.”

If it weren’t for that feeling of guilt, however, Danner’s “secret garden,” as she calls it, wouldn’t have turned out to be the magical place that helped dramatically alter her life as well as her financial fortunes.

Choosing to take a hiatus from her Hollywood acting career so that she could raise her kids, Danner, who was born in New York and comes from a family of actors (Gwyneth Paltrow is her cousin) did the next best thing. She got a vintage canning cookbook and, with the help of a longtime friend named Maria Newman, began making apricot conserves, citrus marmalade, apple-plum butter and Concord grape jelly in her home kitchen.

Subsequently, Danner planted a kitchen garden alongside the fruit trees, blissfully unaware that her life was about to change because of a single vegetable: Peppers.

“I didn’t like spice at the time and I wasn’t that crazy about peppers,” she recalls. “But they were so pretty that I planted more of them—and suddenly I had my pepper challenge."

As a hobby, Danner started out by making simple jellies out of jalapeños and bell peppers, which she then gave to family members, including her aunt, actress Blythe Danner, as well as friends who were chefs or who enjoyed cooking. 

Danner’s aunt was so supportive that she gave a jar of pepper jelly to Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg’s wife. Capshaw sent Danner a note that read: “If you can spice this up and really make it your own, I’ll buy a case and send it to Mario Batali.”

Danner got down to work. She picked seven of the prettiest peppers from her garden and, along with Newman, made a jelly out of them, replete with seeds.

Danner named the concoction “Hell Fire” and offered it at tastings along with cheeses and select meats such as smoked salmon and turkey. The jelly was an instant sell out. “I realized I had a business here,” recalls Danner.

But that’s also when the pressure began. “People started asking, Well, what are your other products?” says Danner. “So I said to myself, Let’s go back to the garden, where it all started.”

Surveying the fruit trees drooping with figs, guavas, apricots and passion fruit, Danner decided to use her peppers as a base to make a variety of fruit jellies. She gave them names such as “Fiery Figs Pepper Jelly,” “Guava Brava” and “Passion Fire Pepper Jelly.”

What began as a hobby of making about half-a-dozen 11.9-ounce jars of Hell Fire in her home kitchen every week has grown into a full-fledged business for Danner over the past year and a half. To keep up with growing demand for Hell Fire Pepper Jelly, she and Newman now source peppers from local, certified organic farms and turn them into fruit-based jellies in a commercial kitchen.

Danner markets her products under the name “Jenkins Jellies” (Jenkins is a nickname that one of her longtime friends gave her). In 2012, the company, which Danner owns, sold 5,000 11.9-ounce jars of Hell Fire. Starting this past June, Jenkins Jellies was on track to sell 10,000 jars per quarter, according to Danner. 

A perfect blend of sweet and hot, Hell Fire jellies have been widely praised by celebrities and in the media. “I am obsessed with it,” Danner’s actress cousin Paltrow wrote, referring to Hell Fire Pepper Jelly, on her food blog, Goop.com. (Orders for Hell Fire skyrocketed following Paltrow’s post—Danner awoke the next morning to some 300 e-mails she initially thought were spam.)

“It dances right on the edge of spicy and sweet in a delicious tango of provocation and pleasure,” celebrity New York Chef Batali heartily declared.

In May 2012, Hell Fire was featured in an article in People magazine, right next to the world-famous Sriracha hot sauce. Hell Fire also made its way to Batali’s ABC cooking show, The Chew, where co-host Daphne Oz, daughter of the television show host Dr. Oz, developed such a liking for the jelly that she included it in a chicken recipe in her recent cookbook, Relish: An Adventure in Food, Style and Everyday Fun.

One of the biggest boosts to Danner’s growing business has come from Dean & DeLuca, the New York-based gourmet food retailer that began selling Hell Fire Pepper Jelly last year. The jelly is now available in more than 30 specialty food stores, many of them on the East Coast, as well as online at JenkinsJellies.com.

Not surprisingly, Hell Fire Pepper Jelly has inspired 50 recipes that Danner and Newman have collected in a 2012 cookbook aptly named Sweet Heat.

“Never again will I be stumped for new ways to use this magical ingredient,” Gwyneth Paltrow writes in the book’s foreword, referring to Hell Fire Pepper Jelly. “Raging Roasted Chicken? Fire and Ice Cream Sundae? Hell Fire Choco-tini? I’m trying them all.” 

To pay a tribute to Danner’s pepper-infused adventures, and with an eye on Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays, Patch will feature a recipe daily from Sweet Heat, starting tomorrow, Thursday.