How a client’s pancake-flavored flour tortillas lead to a satisfying recipe and image.
Sometimes, the work you’re most proud of isn’t the flashiest.
That’s the case with this Brown Sugar Peach “Tostada,” a simple dessert on a white plate with a white background:
As is often true with simple things, a lot was happening behind it.
The request for this recipe and image was a last-minute addition to a long-time client’s project. Their new sister division was launching maple pancake-flavored flour tortillas and needed a short, simple recipe and accompanying image for the back of the package.
My client had no idea what the new product was like.
“I’ll have samples sent your way,” she promised.
Unusual Flour Tortillas
The next day, a huge box of the tortillas arrived, filling my office with the aroma of maple syrup (not a bad thing!).
First, I tore open a package to check out the flour tortillas’ color (dark tan) and texture (soft and pliable). I nibbled them straight from the package, warmed up, and sampled with a variety of fillings.
It was a unique product, to be sure.
“They definitely channel the flavor/experience of maple pancakes,” I wrote my client. “but they’re not super sweet, so they’d work nicely with savory fillings as well.”
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The Recipe Concepts
I pitched a trio of recipe ideas that would complement the tortillas’ distinct flavor profile and work for a decent photo. All involved just a handful of ingredients and two or three steps because space would be tight.
- Cheddar-Bacon Quesadillas, garnished with a drizzle of maple-enhanced hot sauce for a spicy-sweet finish. (Spicy-sweet flavors were trending at the time.)
- Black Forest Ham Wraps with maple-Dijon mustard. These would feature sliced ham, Havarti cheese, lettuce, and tomato.
- Brown Sugar Peach “Tostadas.” The soft maple-flavored flour tortilla would mimic a pancake, which I’d slather with maple-sweetened cream cheese and top with peaches sauteed in butter and brown sugar. I’d garnish this with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of maple syrup, and toasted sliced almonds.
The Result
The “tostadas” won the client’s vote.
I was hoping for this because it would be a nice way to showcase the tortillas. The peaches would add a pop of color, and the ice cream would give it good height overall.
Since there would be just one serving on a white plate with a white background, the food needed to look great without the benefit of supporting props.
What was the verdict?
“The crew is happy with the tostadas,” my client reported. “SPECTACULAR was a comment 😊.”
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What made this work wasn’t the recipe or the image. It was the process that produced both.
This project came in as a last-minute add-on. My client’s new sister division was launching a product she hadn’t tried, which meant there was no creative brief, just the tortillas, where the recipe would appear, and a deadline. We were starting from scratch.
That’s a common starting point. Most brands I work with don’t arrive with a fully formed brief. They have a product, a channel, and a date. So I do the homework: I get my hands on the product, taste it and test it in a real kitchen, and come back with a short list of recipe concepts for the client to react to. They choose a direction; I execute.
In this case, that process produced three distinct concepts — spicy-sweet, savory-sweet, and sweet — that gave the client a genuine choice rather than a single option to approve or reject. The winning concept came directly from understanding what the tortillas could do that wasn’t obvious from the packaging.
That’s the strategic value that supports every recipe and image Content Kitchen delivers: someone who has actually cooked with your product before pitching you ideas about it.
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Most clients come to me with a product and a deadline, not a brief. If that sounds familiar, let’s talk.