Everyone in Brazil grows up knowing the basic recipe for brigadeiros, traditional chocolate desserts made with condensed milk, according to baker and business owner Nayara Lark. But not everyone can make them like Lark.
Lark began baking seriously in 2017, taking classes in Brazil to help herself handle the grief of her mother’s death. After moving to the United States in 2019 to do her postdoc in physiology at the University of Minnesota, Lark began baking for friends’ parties and weddings. It was a gift at first; then, her friends started ordering more of her sweets. Eventually, Lark’s American husband encouraged her to apply to a farmers market.
The Sweet Brazilian, Lark’s dessert business, made its debut at the Como Park Farmers’ Market last month. Lark’s table, decked out in pink and stacked with brigadeiros, carrot cake donuts, and cookies, is becoming a site of nostalgia for local Brazilians and of discovery for other customers.
“This is instant Brazil,” customer Ruth DeYoe said. DeYoe’s mother was Brazilian, and DeYoe grew up eating Brazilian desserts and visiting her mother’s country regularly. She said she has tasted almost everything that Lark offers, which she refers to as her “level-up Brazilian sweets.”
“I still make the traditional brigadeiro,” DeYoe said. “I’m not going to try to make [them] fancy. I come here for fancy.”
A Brazilian confectioner, Heloísa Nabuco de Oliveira, is widely credited with inventing brigadeiros in the mid-1940s. Amid post-war shortages, Brazilians struggled to find supplies of milk and sugar, so she crafted a recipe with condensed milk, cocoa powder and butter. Today, the small, chocolatey truffles are often made at home and sold in bakeries and snack shops, and are common fare at celebrations. They are “everywhere” in Brazil, Lark said, rare in a country where each region has its own cuisine.
Although Lark has served some Brazilian customers, she said the majority of farmers market attendees are not Brazilian and do not know much about the country, so she often has to explain her wares.
“The carrot cake is nothing [like] the American carrot cake, so everybody gets curious to know what’s so different,” Lark said. The Brazilian version uses simpler ingredients: just carrots, sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, baking powder and wheat flour. “Once you taste, [it] explains itself. It’s like, ‘Oh, this is so much better.’”
Lark’s recipe is distinctive. She cooks her carrots before blending them with other ingredients, and she sometimes adds chocolate chips, dulce de leche or cinnamon frosting.
At one market in early June, customers took a particular interest in Lark’s Brazilian carrot cake donut. Brazilian carrot cake is not traditionally in the shape of a donut; Lark invented the recipe for her husband, who said it is his favorite thing she sells.
Lark said always sells brigadeiros in the traditional chocolate form and offers a flavor of the week, choosing from specialties like peanut brittle, coconut and strawberry. Two girls have begun returning weekly to sample these new brigadeiros, and other customers have put in requests for future flavors, according to Lark.
Lark said that she finds it meaningful to share her culture with her neighbors.
“It’s a little sweet piece of Brazil,” Lark said of her desserts. “I try to put all my dedication and love [into] those pieces.”
Sitting alongside vendors selling freshly grown produce, homemade bread and Tibetan momos, Lark’s booth fills a niche in the Como Park Farmers’ Market — which is part of the reason she became a vendor.
The St. Paul Growers’ Association admitted 18 new vendors into the city’s farmers markets this year, according to SPGA Assistant Director Lindsay Stauner. Around 50 businesses had applied.
After farmers market hopefuls submitted applications in December and January, a committee of nine current vendors decided who would make it in. Successful applicants fit within the current farmers market landscape: the physical map of booths, and the mix of products available at each market. The committee wanted all St. Paul farmers markets to offer a balanced variety of goods.
Having made it into the market, Lark’s next goals for her business include increased visibility and more catering for weddings and bridal showers.
Meanwhile, she continues her clinical research into menopause and perimenopause.
At the farmers market, though, in only her fifth week as a vendor, “I’m just having fun,” Lark said.
The Sweet Brazilian will be at the Como Park Farmers’ Market from 2-6 p.m. every Thursday this summer, except during the State Fair.
