Baking Queen!

I had to look at the last time I posted and it was March 25. It has been like three weeks since we have decided to seriously look into doing this gluten free bakery, and while it is exciting and fun, I have many fears.

My biggest fear is that I am going to contaminate someone that has gluten intolerance with my baking. I NEVER want to make someone sick with something they buy from me. While I am focusing on making my items gluten free, and testing that I can do to make sure that it is gluten free I stumble upon forums and blogs with people talking about how they are getting sick. Gluten is in EVERYTHING it seems, even things that we think are gluten free. There is an entire forum surrounding people testing foods and seeing if there is gluten or at least the ppm (whatever that means). In America, anything 20 ppm and lower is considered gluten free, in all other countries I believe 0 ppm is gluten free, so America is a bit behind on this disease. There are test strips out there to test the food for 10ppm or higher. I don't grow my own rice or milk my own cow so how do I TRULY know if things are gluten free?? I certainly don't want to give an item that I think is gluten free to someone with celiac disease, only to cause them to get sick. I could very well have gluten intolerance, as it is a highly genetic disease and I know that it runs in my family, but I don't deal with the sickness that someone of my family members have, so I don't have the reactions that they do.

I am a rollercoaster of emotions regarding this endeavor. I want to make good food that anybody would eat...but the fear of making someone sick SUCKS! Maybe I need to turn my backyard into one big farm to ensure that the items I offer are 100% gluten free.

With that being said--I am quite happy with our spread thus far. We did register our name with the county, so we are officially Andersson's Kitchen. We need to get all of our paperwork into the department of Agriculture and then get inspected. If we pass inspection, then we can go to the county and get zoning approval. Though in VA, you don't really have to do all this, I want to do it because I have bigger dreams (or at least bigger goals. This wasn't really a dream of mine). I had to stop trying new recipes because we have to turn all of our recipes into the dept of agriculture and it was getting ridiculous how long it took to type it all up and do all the procedures etc.

We have a good list though ---

Cookies -
White chip macadamia nut
Melt aways
Chocolate Chip
Chocolate with white chip
peanut butter
Sugar cookies
White chip and toffee
Chocolate dipped chocolate chip
Chocolate dipped Shortbread cookies
Blueberry Muffins
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Vanilla Cupcakes
Triple Chocolate Cupcakes
Strawberry Cupcakes (a personal fav)
Lemon Cupcakes
Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
Red Velvet Cupcakes (my mom's fav)
Peanut butter cup chocolate cupcakes
Vanilla Mousse Cheesecake
Sour Cream Lemon Poundcake
Brownies
Angel Food Cake
Chocolate Cream Pie
Pavlova
Apple Pie
And then various icings for the cupcakes

We will add more, but we wanted to get these to the state to get the process going.

My mom did order some cupcakes today...so we had our first official sale. I felt kind of weird taking money from my mom for this endeavor, but she insisted since it was a business we were running. Of course, she has had MANY freebies given to her through these past few weeks, and I threw in another 5 or 6 cupcakes from another batch I made for her to try as well as my step-niece...who the cupcakes were for because she had a birthday party and is gluten free.

There are some ULTRA sensitive gluten intolerant people out there...I think I need to just stay away from their forums or I will walk away from this endeavor. They go completely grain free, meaning no rice even...and rice isn't supposed to have gluten in it. Patric just said, those are the types that won't be our customers. I guess he is right, because if you are ultra sensitive to gluten you probably need to grow and make everything yourself because probably everything comes in contact with a little bit of gluten here and there.

I feel a bit discouraged...though many around me are good at keeping my spirits up, especially my mom. She is super excited about this...I think moreso then when I decided to open my bookkeeping and tax business.

Anyway--we are off to dinner. I get to bring some yummy treats!

Sasha