SB PROFILE
TUREAZA
LOPEZ
B
The Baker’s Path
aking is many things to Tureaza Lopez. Baking is a science. “Baking takes components to make it arise to what it’s supposed to be. If it lacks one of those components, it won’t be the product you wanted. But it’s a fun science, and it’s not complex.”
Baking is art. “I like to compare it to being a painter,” she said. “I am not a painter. But they can visualize something, and they can paint it. I can paint a taste in a product without knowing if it’s going to taste good or not. It’s kind of like when you paint a picture. You just know.” “Baking is a lot different than cooking,” she said. “I am a great chef, but my passion is in baking.” Lopez fondly recalls baking oatmeal cookies as a girl growing up in California. But she wasn’t so sure the kitchen was where she wanted to be when she chose the United States Air Force as part of her life’s path. “When I joined the military and I found out I was going to be a chef, I put my head down on the desk and I cried,” she said. “I didn’t join the military to work at Denny’s. In the end, God showed me where I was supposed to be.” She served more than 20 years in the military. While overseas, Lopez discovered another pursuit outside the kitchen. “I was stationed in Germany and was going through a personal trauma,” she said. “I wanted something to focus on. One of my old friends was in the fitness industry. She had started competing. She said, ‘Tess, you should really do this.’ So Tess began to compete. It was during that part of her journey she learned something more about herself.
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MAY 2022
| SBMAG.NET
BY SCOTT ANDERSON
“I like goals. If I want something, I want it. But at the end of it, once I accomplish it, I don’t carry on with it. If I put a goal out there, the goal was the great thing about it for me.” She stopped competing, but she discovered a new passion — creating a cupcake that was balanced for carbs, fats and proteins but still tasted like a cupcake. “I was literally at the gym pushing cupcakes in people’s faces and saying, ‘Try this. Does this taste like a cupcake?’ I was trying to create something that tasted like the traditional thing,” she said. But when that path proved rocky, a revelation led her to a new fork in her road. “In trying to sell to the body-building community, even though I knew and trusted my product, I wasn’t able to sell the trust,” she said. “I sat there and said, ‘Why am I selling to less than 1 percent of this nation when I should be selling to the 99.9 percent of this nation that just wants to have a healthy dessert that tastes like the real thing?’” She launched Prep Cakes to serve those who were struggling to meet their health and weight-loss goals. “People rely a lot on diets,” Lopez said. “I can support that. Some people need that strict thing to follow. The problem is it’s not a lifestyle. Prep Cakes is a lifestyle. It allows you to have your cake and eat it too. You can pick and choose.” The concept took off. So much so that many of the people who enjoyed her healthy take on traditional sweet treats encouraged her to take another big step in 2018. “I had a lot of customers who said I should audition for ‘Shark Tank,’ she said. “Because my customers wanted me to, I did.” She traveled to Dallas for the audition. It was a long, arduous nine-hour day, she recalled. About 48 hours later,
