Why We Don't Make Everything Gluten-Free

The Question We Hear

Customers ask at the market whether our cakes are gluten-free. It is a fair question, and a lot of people in Asheville eat that way. The honest answer is that some of our cakes are and some are not.

We have tried to make them all gluten-free. Some recipes translate and some do not. We will not force one just to put a label on it.

Made Like It Was in Grandma's Kitchen

We want everything we bake to feel hand-made and small-batch, like it came out of your Grandma's kitchen. That means real ingredients and no cutting corners. When a recipe can be made gluten-free and still taste like itself, we do it. When it cannot, we look for another way to make it work for people with dietary needs.

The Ones That Translate

Lemon Cake was the easy one. The recipe is Grandma Elbach's, and it took to a blend of gluten-free flour, almond flour, and corn starch without losing anything. The lemon does the rest, and the cake is naturally dairy-free too. You can see it on our lemon cake page.

A lot of our cakes work this way. German Cheesecake, Donauwelle, the summer sheet cakes. When a swap works, you will not taste the difference, because we would not sell it if you could.

The Ones We Will Not Force

Apple Strudel is the example I always give. The dough has to be rolled out paper-thin, and gluten is what holds it together. Without it, you do not get strudel, you get something else. So it is not gluten-free, and we will not pretend it is.

But we did not stop there. The strudel is vegan instead. The filling uses dairy-free butter and gluten-free bread crumbs. We could not make it work for one dietary need, so we made it work for another.

Still Working on It

There is one cake I keep coming back to. Sand Cake, also called the Mimi-Cake. It is a simple pound cake, and it sounds easy until you try to make it without gluten. We have tried, and we have not gotten it right yet. So it is not on our menu, and it will not be until we do.

I would rather leave a cake off the menu than sell a version I am not proud of.

Find the Ones That Work

Most of what we bring to the market is gluten-free. Come taste the difference at one of our markets or email us and we will help you find the right cake.