A Sweet Revolution
There’s a problem with cake. No, it’s not the idea of cake that troubles me––that I can get behind. Rather, it’s the taste of cake that is of bother. Childhood birthdays with the same custard-filled sheet cake making an appearance at every party will do that to you. That and the broken promise of beautiful confections lining display windows of bakeries the world over. Any hope that this cake will finally be the one is always diminished after a few underwhelming bites. Sadly, swirls and embellishments don’t always lend themselves to texture and taste and yet the biggest culprit in this dilemma isn’t even a lack of skills, it’s sugar.
While essential to cake baking and desserts of all kinds, the all-too-common blah feeling that comes with a mouth full of sugar has had me cutting down––and sometimes cutting out––the required amount for a recipe. And while I subscribe to the belief that a well-rounded diet is one that is focused on quality rather than deprivation, I still want the sweets I’m eating to be, well, less sweet.
If you too have pushed your plate away with a mound of blue icing scooped off to the side, Québec’s Bela Peko will surely appeal. Aptly named using the Esperanto word for “Beautiful Sin”, a line of ready-to-cook dessert products using vegetables as a base is bound to change the way you think of dessert.
Founder Danielle Paquet’s Sweet Revolution is expressed in a line of four ready-to-bake flavours with all the necessary ingredients for you to whip up a treat in no time. Tackling the sugar problem by using only cane sugar and those naturally found in vegetables, Bela Peko operates using a lean business model, meaning they utilize what is already available and what people are already doing well through subcontracts. This is also highlighted in their product packaging; each product has been designed by a Québec illustrator who was commissioned to represent a different flavour.
Ingredients are sourced in Québec and Canada and recipes are created in collaboration with nutrition experts to ensure higher nutritional values. Using a vegetable as a cake base is not a new concept, but it is a brilliant one. Not only do vegetable purées allow for added moisture and a substitution for sugar, storing vegetables in a purée format also extends the life of these vegetables that have a limited growing season in Canada.
Each canister has everything you need and requires only that you have eggs and oil on hand to add to the provided ingredients. You can then opt to make cake, cookies, or cupcakes by using the appropriate mold and baking for the corresponding baking time.
With new flavours currently in the works and a continued approach to reconsidering how vegetables can be used, this is one revolution that is here to stay.
