In stressful times, people tend to consume food that falls into two major categories: Nutrient-dense options that help strengthen and sustain, and foods that bring comfort. Churros are not only great comfort foods – they also bring international flair to your menu and provide a blank slate for a wide variety of sweet and savory flavor combinations. Depending on the seasonings and presentations you choose, churros can round out your dessert or appetizer menu. 

From pineapple on pizza to maple syrup on bacon, sweet and salty flavors can bring out the best in each other. In her book TASTE: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good, the author Barb Stuckey compares the experience of eating a sweet and salty food to “hearing beautiful music while sniffing rose petals.” It sparks the senses in two ways at once, creating an experience that is better and more memorable than it would be if a person experienced those sensations individually. What sweet-and-salty combinations can you create to elevate the flavors on your menu?

Looking for a dessert that is a customizeable, Instagrammable crowd pleaser? Try adding a sweet pizza to your menu. There are dozens of possibilities for making a creative signature pie. The food website Delish suggests such varieties as caramel apple, Nutella with toasted marshmallows, or berries with mascarpone cheese. Dessert pizzas are ideal dishes to feature in-season ingredients, allow for some guest customization, and use surplus ingredients in your kitchen pantry.

What are the holidays without comfort food? If you’re looking for something that brings savory and slightly sweet tastes to your breakfast menu, consider the sausage kolache (or klobasnek, according to its Czech roots). A mainstay in parts of Texas, the sausage kolache is a pillowy, mildly sweet dough filled with sausage and cheese. In the Czech Republic, kolaches can be filled with various combinations of fruit, cheese and other ingredients.

Are your guests demanding plant-based substitutes on your entrée menu? If so, they may have a taste for plant-based ice cream. Until now, many of the dairy-free stand-ins for ice cream haven’t been as much about mimicking traditional ice cream but instead offering an alternative to it. Now, as the Impossible Burger and lab-grown meat aim to mimic the full experience of eating a burger, ice cream manufacturers are also harnessing technology to perfect a plant-based product. Eclipse Foods, which produces a dairy-free and allergy-free product that it says is indistinguishable from animal dairy, recently inked deals with the ice cream brands Humphrey Slocombe and Oddfellows, TechCrunch reports. Eclipse flavorings ranging from Miso Cherry to Mexican Hot Chocolate will soon be coming to plant-based ice cream pints in New York and San Francisco. Armed with funding from some heavy-hitting investors, their flavors may be expanding beyond the coasts thereafter.

The assault on sugar continues. Food + Tech Connect’s latest U.S. Food and Beverage Startup Investment Report was released recently and reports on the continued decline of sweeteners in the American diet. It said that according to the USDA, per capita sugar consumption has declined for four straight years and is now at a 30-year low. What’s more, alternative sweeteners like stevia and monkfruit have not won over American taste buds. The trend is sparking startup activity as companies develop food and drink designed to replace sugary or artificially sweet items. It’s a trend to bear in mind as you develop dessert offerings and describe menu items. Ingredients that offer inherent sweetness – without any help from sugar, artificial sweeteners or even natural, low-calorie sweeteners – are more apt to win with consumers.