Gluten-Free Cake At The Cake Wrecks Book Signing

Example of a Jacy Cakes cake

I received this email the other day:

My name is Cathy Olate & I am a co-owner of a new specialty cake business, Jacy Cakes LLC, based in Manhattan along with my partner Josh Whitney. We are very proud to offer delicious alternative diet-such as vegan or gluten free- cakes, cupcakes & cookies. I'm writing to you today to let you know, and hope you pass the word along, that we will be making a really big & awesome gluten-free cake for the NY stop of the Cake Wrecks book signing tour. If you haven't heard of cake wrecks, please check out their site cakewrecks.com , it's a hilarious blog that has become a book now and it has a huge following! We are big fans so we offered up a cake to them and convinced them that since they already have someone bringing a regular cake, that we could make our cake gluten-free for anyone that might be a fan of the site, but can't take part in eating the cakes there because of celiac disease. So now we're trying to get the word out because we are making a gluten-free cake to serve 100 and we want people to come eat it up! Please let me know if this is something you can help us with...

Just in case, the book signing will be on Nov 3rd (next Tuesday) at 7:30pm at:

Barnes & Noble
396 Ave of the Americas at 8th St.
New York, NY 10011

I happen to looove the Cake Wrecks blog. It's always good for a belly laugh. And I'm always happy to support a fellow blogger. I did have to write back to Cathy and ask about what precautions they take to make gluten-free cakes.

Here was her reply:

Hi Kelly,

   Thank you so much for getting back to me! Well the precautions we take are these: we arrange our baking schedule so that gluten-free cakes and regular cakes are never baked on the same day. Also, we have a bin that has a separate mixer, tools & pans that are for gluten free food only. Before we work on anything, we clean counters, tools & pans & then wipe everything down with vinegar. Then after we are done working with the cake, everything gets washed & wiped down with vinegar again before going back into the gluten-free bin. We are very serious about avoiding cross contamination!

   The story behind us making gluten-free cakes really begins with the fact that my partner, Josh, used to be vegetarian and tried being vegan for a while. Because of that, he became very familiar with the difficulties that come from having an alternative diet. He went to the Culinary Institute of America, where he took a course in gluten free baking and he identified with the plight of someone with celiac disease to find a truly delicious pastry, and not just something that is "good... for vegan or gluten-free". 

  We've been friends for a few years so I've gone on a few adventures in the city to find good vegan food & pastries, and a lot of places have come up short. So, when we decided to start this business together, we wanted to experiment with recipes until we landed on some that we think are really good, not just "good for" gluten free. 

   We are a new business and we don't have pictures of gluten free cakes yet, but we have had several tastings and the response is overwhelmingly positive and we have subsequently booked several orders that are coming up in the next few months. But, any gluten-free cake we make would look just like any other cake on our site. We specifically didn't want to have any restrictions for decorating these cakes because well, we don't think it's very fair! Why can't someone have a crazy sweet sixteen cake, or an elegant wedding cake, just because it's gluten-free? 

   So, I hope this information was helpful, and thanks for spreading the word!

 

  Cathy

So there you have it! Go and enjoy some gluten-free cake! These people sound so very nice, don't they?