She uses brown sugar for the "hundreds" of Christmas cakes she's making, and for ginger cakes and apple strudel cake. There has been none on supermarket shelves for several weeks, due to a contaminated batch being recalled.
"I'm lucky because I managed to get a few bags early on when [the recall] happened, from my distributor. I get it from Stevo's Distributors in Whanganui, or Bidfood in Palmerston North," Devine said.
She's not the only one missing out. Manufacturers of confectionery and cookies have been affected, as well as home bakers and people who like brown sugar on their porridge.
If Devine gets desperate she will try some substitutes - a mixture of white sugar and golden syrup instead of raw sugar, and a crushed mixture of caster sugar and molasses instead of brown sugar - to get that caramel taste.
She's planning to take January off, and return to baking in February.
Pastry chef Litza Devine has Christmas baking orders galore. Photo / Bevan Conley
"I'm hoping the sugar situation is going to be OK. If not, I will make my own and just make do," she said.
The cause of the raw and brown sugar shortage is the contamination of a single shipment of raw sugar from Queensland, Australia, to New Zealand's only sugar refinery, Chelsea Sugar/New Zealand Sugar Co in Auckland.
The unrefined bulk shipment arrived in a ship that had transported "industrial materials" in a previous load. A low-level contamination with lead was found during routine testing of the two sugar products, RNZ reported.
They were sold during October, and recalled on November 4.
People with the products can either dispose of the sugar or take them back to the store where they bought them and get a refund.
There is no immediate danger from consuming the sugar unless they are consumed over a long time.
Whanganui's Bin Inn ran out of the sugar, manager Sahil Kumar said. He hopes to have more by the end of the week.
Geeta Singh, the owner of Geeta's Spices and Veggies, has some possible substitutes - palm sugar, coconut sugar and jaggery, a hard brown sugar.
"It's healthier compared to other sugar, and Indians like palm sugar to make chutney, or even when we make tea," she said.
Meanwhile, Chelsea Sugar is maximising production to get the sugars back on shelves as soon as possible, a spokesperson said. They may be in limited supply and in fewer pack sizes than usual.
Some shoppers will have seen stocks trickle in already. There will be more leading up to Christmas, and the company appreciates its customers' patience.
Foodstuffs New Zealand is responsible for Pak 'n Save and New World supermarkets. Its corporate affairs manager, Emma Wooster, expected to get limited amounts of brown and raw sugar into the stores in the next few days.
In the meantime, she was asking people to buy only what they needed.
There had also been a national shortage of red and green glace cherries, and Wooster said they were on their way.
The glace cherries have been shipped from Italy and are due to arrive any day, she said. They have been held up on the water by Covid-19 supply chain issues.
