Leading decorating companies help bakeries stay ahead of the trends. An innovative solution available from Lawrence Foods, Decocrèmes Icings are a great tool to help build a display that makes an impact. Ice-N-Set Icings are perfect for dipping or stringing. These heated icings have a nice firm set with a bright shine.

Lawrence Foods features seasonal favorites that include Orchard Fresh Fruit Fillings, DecoCrèmes Flavored Icings and Crème Fillings. These flavored icings enhance your bakery portfolio by providing unique seasonal and everyday options. Benefits include on-trend, rich flavors enhanced by eye-catching colors, and no unnatural or unpleasant aftertaste.

One simple solution to elevate your cake case is to focus on glazes, inclusions, and icings. Dawn Foods points out these shelf-stable staples help you create flavorful cakes, donuts, and more while getting you the most out of your investment.

Investing is premium icings helps your bakery stay on top of consumer trends. From buttercreme-style to vibrant options full of color, icings can improve the taste of your baked goods as well as increase their value. Cakes and other creations that are more stylized and specific to an occasion often carry a higher price tag. They also give you a platform for sharing your team’s decorating skills.

If you’re looking for a way to take your everyday cupcakes, cakes, and brownies and turn them into special treats, consider inclusions. Inclusions give your baked goods an unexpected surprise that will keep customers coming back, wanting to buy more. From dried fruits, chocolate chunks, nuts, and more, inclusions are simple to use, easy to store, and provide a big payoff.

Beyond impulse

It is worth noting that less than 30% of consumers report purchasing treats on impulse alone, associated purchasing behaviors indicate that, while not listed as the main purchasing behavior, impulsiveness is a close secondary factor, according to research. The most cited driver for purchase was the promotion of a new flavor. To no surprise, social media has become a key information source for those who want to be on the forefront of today's food trends. This has created a market for colorful desserts that attract attention. 

A new product featuring Glanbia Nutritionals edible glitter, EdiSparklz provide eye-catching and unique visual elements to catch consumers’ attention

Examples of these products include EdiSparklz Natural Color Flakes, which are made from gum acacia and plant-based food colorants, such as cabbage juice, turmeric, spirulina, cocoa, chlorophyll and radish. They have no flavor, no sweetness and add no calories. Flakes work well as toppings on frostings, icings, frozen treats and savory snacks and as inclusions for muffins, cookies and cakes. Flakes also work well in fillings, compound coatings for enrobing and confectionery.

The product’s benefits including the ability to create a unique appearance, and these thin and lightweight flakes translate to cost savings. Due to weight bakeries can save 20% on freight costs and warehouse space.

Also, the quick research and development turnaround translates into valuable labor savings. Once you have added EdiSparklz, it is easy to change your look, just swap for a different colored glitter for a whole new look without added R&D time.

Critical choices

It is equally important for bakers to remember that fats and oils enhance texture, flavor, and mouthfeel in finished products they produce, according to Stratas Foods. In other words, the fats and oils are more than just base-line functional, the choices made are critical to the final products served. All fats are not the same, so the bakers need to approach their craft realizing that specific types of fats should be used in different applications of baking.

Stratas Foods offers shortenings designed to produce PHO-free icings that perform just like those made with PHOs. Being able to accomplish this is vital to bakers and Stratas is glad to play a role.

These products are a combination of high-oleic oils and hard solid fats, according to Stratas. Meanwhile, the Flex crystallization process helps control the size of the fat crystals to make shortenings with longer stability and usability. Stratas also has shortening and oils with reduced-saturates and made without hydrogenated oils so our customers can meet those demands of their end customers as well.

For Stratas, the company is in the process of moving away from palm-based oils and fats due to environmental and health concerns. Beyond that, some of the priorities looking ahead include:

Cakes – retaining more moisture, moving away from palm bases oils.

Icings and decorating – more tolerant icing to hold up better in heat. Product that retains colors well. And overall mouthfeel.

Pandemic-related measures are changing the business model, as well as staff reduction, according to Stratas. Some bakers have made changes to the product mix by removing labor-intensive products. They are also seeing increased sales of comfort foods, such as donuts, cookies and cakes.

Hispanic influences

In what may seem counterintuitive during what some consider to be a return to simpler times, there is significant movement in the cake decorating world that is churning down the tracks with the sheer power of a locomotive. Over-the-top cake toppings are all the rage, and a rising number of panaderias are taking notice with their own versions of extreme cakes.

At Mi Tierra in Springdale, Ohio, store manager Jose Sanchez explains they fill their display fridge with 12 cakes per day, and customers rave about every single one. And the best part is they sell out on a daily basis. Vanilla cakes with peach or strawberry filling are common, as are colorful and eye-catching decorations that entice shoppers to make a purchase.

“Our bakers like to make colorful cakes,” Sanchez points out. “People come here, and they know they are going to find something they really want. We make really nice products and very unique cakes with special designs.”

At Panadería La Mexicana in Fairfield, Ohio, Luis Leon, whose father Adalberto Leon owns the bakery, points out that cake sales keep going up year to year. Cakes are their No.1 growth item in terms of sales growth, and he estimates their cake sales have quadrupled in recent years.

“We are making 50 to 60 cakes on a weekend,” he explains. “People are ordering a lot of smaller cakes – 8- to 10-inches – because they are not having mass gatherings. They still order smaller cakes at weddings, but weddings with an order of 10 cakes for the one wedding.”

Another huge trend, he points out, is that their customers want more elaborate toppings and decadent fillings in their cakes.

“For us, we are making a lot more cakes with fillings, like cream fillings, and a lot with chocolate chips and other toppings,” Leon shares. “Even with cakes, people are asking for more chocolate icings or even Oreo toppings on their cakes. People are enjoying smaller, but more frequent celebrations.”