Nelvis Reverón/ Mesa, AZ

Baking Blitz

As the stage is set for Super Bowl LVIII, we flashback to the colorful and flavor packed Prickly Pear Gel created by Nelvis Reverón, owner of Sugary Cake in Mesa, Arizona. Her dessert was featured at the league VIP tailgate party and features gluten-free shortbread and white chocolate mousse to resemble the Arizona sunset which was a nod to Phoenix hosting the Super Bowl in 2023. We are excited to see what will be served at the Las Vegas show down between the 49ers and Chiefs.

Jose Barboza, operations advisor at Sugary Cake, said the event theme emphasized local flavor. “Being in Arizona, it’s not like we have tons of vegetation. Prickly pear is something natives use and The Perfect Purée flavor is accurate. Then you have people coming from Philadelphia saying, ‘What the hell is prickly pear?’ ”

To make the gel, Nelvis mixed the purée with agar-agar, salt, sugar, water and vinegar. Processing prickly pear by hand is a messy, time-consuming task. “The fact that Nelvis doesn’t have to clean it and boil it and process it, it saves a lot of time,” Jose said. “Basically even after going through the boiling process, the flavor does not decrease whatsoever.”

Nelvis said that’s due to adding vinegar, a trick she used to maintain the flavor integrity of the prickly pear through boiling, cooling and reheating the gel.

Goal Oriented

Planning for Sugary Cake’s contribution to Super Bowl LVII started the day of  Super Bowl LVI in early 2022. First, Sugary Cake had to make the cut to compete for a Super Bowl contract. Jose said Nelvis was part of the business organization Local First Arizona, which told her the NFL would be looking for minority female-owned businesses at the 2023 game. “We were watching the Super Bowl a year before and she said, ‘I applied today.’ I laughed at her and said, ‘Yeah, right, whatever,’ ” Jose recalled laughing.

Out of 300 applicants, Sugary Cake became one of 220 Arizona businesses designated as approved suppliers for the Super Bowl LVII Business Connect program. With that green light, Nelvis and her team could start the long process towards final approval of their showstopping dessert.

“We did like eight different versions,” Jose says. “It took months in order to get to the final design until we were one of four final designs chosen by judges from the league.”

Sugary Cake was among 115 local businesses ultimately contracted for the big game — providing security and logistics, staging, publicity, photography and more. The day before the game, they left hundreds of single-serve cups in boxes at the stadium.

“No one is allowed to bring anything the day of the Super Bowl,” Jose says. On the day of the game, they went through “bomb squad” security checks, Jose says, and served their dessert at the party. “We got more questions, ‘What is it?’ and ‘How is it made?’ They were so intrigued by how it’s made.”

Game Plan

Founded in 2017, Sugary Cake specializes in elaborate custom cakes with the highest quality ingredients. All of its desserts can be made without nuts, dairy and gluten. Like the gluten-free shortbread in its Super Bowl dessert, if the flavor is there no one will miss the gluten, Jose says.

In October, @sugarycakeaz shared a photo of Nelvis next to the NCAA Men’s Final Four trophy, a preview of her 2024 plans. Jose says Sugary Cake is moving through the vendor qualification process to make a dessert for the Final Four, April 6 in Phoenix.

“We haven’t even got to the point of designing,” he says. “But the advantage is once you get into the network a lot of people use your information as a reference. We would love to use The Perfect Purée however we are not sure of the theme of the tournament. That could change the type of product and storage conditions.”

Does any of this mean they get tickets to a big game? No way, said Jose. “After all that, we were not able to watch the [Super Bowl] because we had a second drop-off for an event at a Phoenix hotel,” he said ruefully.