Deep Dark and Delicious

For Mariane Oliveira, the chocolatier behind Mary's Brigadeiro in Toronto, the path to confections was anything but smooth.

After studying and working in business in her native Brazil, she came to a stark realization. “At 23 years old,” Oliveira says, “I didn’t feel that I was doing something I was passionate about, or that I had a purpose.” Unhappy, she left her job and returned to something familiar: her mother’s kitchen.

“I grew up watching my mother produce amazing sweets, desserts and chocolate confections, but, at that time, it was a very humble venture — just for survival,” Oliveira explains. “She never saw that as entrepreneurship, but the truth is, my mother was a natural entrepreneur.”

In between jobs and inspired by her mother’s business savvy, Oliveira decided to try her hand at making sweets, only to ignite her passion for chocolate-making. Equipped with newfound confidence, she enrolled in Brazil’s Chocolate Academy and joined her mother in running a successful business specializing in one of Brazil’s most famed sweets, the brigadeiro.

Crafted from accessible ingredients (sweetened condensed milk, cocoa and butter), the brigadeiro is a delectable mix between a truffle, caramel and fudge, which began as an affordable pleasure in Brazil, after the Second World War. At that time, a presidential candidate named Eduardo Gomes — a military brigadier — became popular with female voters, who bolstered his political efforts by making and distributing these confections in the streets. Though Gomes lost the presidency, his campaign treats became a national treasure.

Wanting to respect the brigadeiro tradition while working with the highest quality ingredients, Oliveira continued to develop her recipes in her São Paolo kitchen. After a trip to Toronto in 2012, she fell in love with the city and wanted to share her confections with a new market. It took two years to convince her Canadian husband to move home, but during that time, she sent product samples to her mother-in-law in Toronto for feedback. When the couple finally arrived in 2014, Oliveira was armed with a solid business plan.

She began selling her products through Pusateri’s in 2015, but didn’t open her flagship store in Toronto’s east end until 2018. From the start, she decided to work with local ingredients wherever possible, such as Niagara-On-The-Lake lavender for her lemon and lavender brigadeiro — one of many seasonal flavours. Oliveira says the biggest challenge facing her business is educating consumers about a product they’ve never tried before. But for her, it comes down to taste. When most people sample one of her creations for the first time, “their eyes roll back into their heads as they get that feeling of pure enjoyment,” she says. And it’s that “feeling” that forms the basis of her business. “What’s really in a brigadeiro?” she asks. “It’s love. That’s the only thing you need.”

And that’s something very sweet indeed.

Mary’s Brigadeiro
1912 Danforth Ave., Toronto, Ont.
marysbsweets.com | 647.883.0484 | @marysbrigadeiro