Contemporary flavour trends and the desire for convenience are driving evolution in cakes and pastries

Cakes and pastries are always popular with customers, and buying in readymade frozen product is a cost-effective menu choice, especially given the current staff and skills shortage throughout foodservice. You don’t have to source the ingredients, buy them in or bake – just pull a slice, pastry or cake from the freezer and you’re ready to roll!  

And by using a pre-portioned cake, you can take out exactly the number of portions you need, then further embellish through garnishing and plating to add your own signature touch. To find out about the current presentation and flavour trends in cakes and pastries, we spoke to Ken Hartley, CEO of major supplier Priestley’s Gourmet Delights.

“We’re currently seeing the impact of overseas flavour trends,” Ken tells us. “As the borders start to open up again, people are travelling more so those international influences are making themselves felt. Unexpected flavour matchings, such as sweet-savoury continues to trend internationally and is going to become more mainstream.  

“We’re seeing flavours you wouldn’t naturally expect to go together, such as avocado and chocolate, or cauliflower and strawberry. These complex combinations have changed flavour expectations from consumers. Indigenous flavours are also trending high at the moment – native spices like lemon myrtle, strawberry gum, wattleseed and Kakadu plum. We’re seeing the use of soured citrus, fermented fruits which have tart taste profiles, and that’s likely to continue to grow.”

Ken adds that cakes and pastries which cater to specific dietary requirements are also much in demand. “We surveyed about 40 of our end-users and the most significant call out was around dietary led offers. There’s been a really big response to gluten free, dairy free and vegan. Plant-based has really been normalised now across the industry as well, so I think the dietary call out is massive.”

Pre-prepared offers more in demand than ever

Consumers’ love affair with convenience has grown exponentially during Covid and Ken doesn’t anticipate any decline. “People have an expectation now and will continue to demand more in that space. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback around our pre-cut cakes and individual portions, and because of the staffing and skills shortage within cafes and hospitality generally, we’re finding pre-prepared dessert offers are more in demand than ever.

“It’s all about ease of application and ease of service – and it ensures reduced waste as well. Put simply, if you’ve got one chef available, you’d probably rather have them prepare your hot food than your sweets. So we strive to offer a range which fulfils the needs of the consumer, with minimal preparation and labour to the kitchen staff, so they can focus on other areas.

“From the surveys we've done of our customer base, we also know individual serves are in strong demand, although our sales would suggest the traditional lines continue to dominate. We offer cakes in both uncut and precut, but predominantly the latter, and the beauty of that is you can take out the quantity of product you want for a day’s sales.

If you typically serve four slices of chocolate mudcake in a day, you can put those four individual serves in the cake cabinet without having to defrost the entire cake. That’s become even more appealing during the whole period of Covid uncertainty, and certainly it’s appealing from a stock management perspective to have individual units of cakes or individual slices,”

Gluten free has become almost the norm in NPD

Nostalgia has long been a key selling point in the presentation and recipes that make up the best-selling cakes and pastries, and Ken says that hasn’t changed. “If you look at our top-selling lines, citrus tarts, carrot cakes, vanilla slices, caramel slices are still up there. One thing that’s different now, though, is that the gluten free varieties of those sit at the top of the list rather than midrange. For example, our gluten free caramel slice outsells our standard, though we still offer both.

“Gluten free has become a substantial component of the overall product line, and it’s become almost the norm that when we’re developing new products, they will be gluten free as a matter of course. Everything we develop today is NAFNAC – no artificial flavours, no artificial colours – and that, like gluten free, has become a must-have for many venues.” Ken emphasises that contemporary gluten free cake and pastry recipes are as good if not better than the regular formulation. “Gluten free used to be seen as the poor cousin but that’s certainly not the case today – the technology has come a long way and the standard is right up there.

Vegan too has grown in demand. “We provide vegan options to all our customers and again we ensure the vegan product is as good as a regular. Vegan cakes are in widespread use across many venues even though they won’t all call them out as such. Often the signage is quite subtle, for example putting a little v in brackets at the end of the product name. And that’s because they want the product to appeal to everyone, given those wanting vegan meals still remain a small proportion of the overall market.

“The other change we’ve seen, primarily in the foodservice landscape, is that hybrid model of in-venue service combined with the delivery model, in other words ensuring that the food you serve will work for dine-in as well as at-home consumption. As we’ve come out of Covid, foodservice professionals have recognised the value of offering home delivery. So we’ve worked to ensure our products are transportable, because that trend isn’t going away.” This has primarily involved modifications to packaging, as opposed to product reformulation: “it’s not so much a case of having to change the product, it’s simply another consideration during development, that of will it travel well? But it wasn’t something you would traditionally look at.”

A further Covid-driven shift in the market from which Priestley’s has benefited has been the move towards sourcing local and supporting Australian manufacturers – “We’ve certainly seen an increase in volume and demand due to our being an Australian owned and operated business,” Ken affirms.