I’m sad I can’t eat gluten. But this Kansas City-area bakery brings me sweet joy
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I first fell in love with food on an early Sunday morning, when my dad was in the kitchen baking a sour cream coffee cake after having worked the hospital’s late shift.
He had not slept. His scrubs smelled of brown sugar and cinnamon. His hands were coated in flour as he pranced around the room singing Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again/ Itsy Bitsy Spider,” which played over our old stereo.
The cake was glorious. It still makes me sentimental: the fact he had worked all night, but needed to wake me, my sister and my mother up with something sweet. I was under the age of 10 and from that point on, I understood food as an expression of love.
At 25, I can no longer eat his sour cream coffee cakes. I was diagnosed in 2021 with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that damages my small intestine whenever I eat gluten. And that means no wheat flour. I was still mourning the loss of every cake, bagel, pizza and crusty deli sandwich that I’d never again eat when I moved from New York to Kansas City last year.
But then I found Emily Kate’s bakery, a small, gluten-free shop with around 10 kitchen staff, tucked away in a Kansas City, Kansas, warehouse at 3008 S. 44th St. Orders are taken over the phone at 913-645-7674.
The shop sells to a number of local cafes and Whole Foods, where they provide cookies, cakes, biscuits and cinnamon rolls. I bought my first box of cupcakes to bring to a friend’s dinner party after the Whole Foods staff doubted the authenticity of my New York ID and refused to let me buy wine.
Far too often, I’m confronted with crumbling mounds of pseudo flour passed off as a gluten-free snack. Too often these are small, dense and fall apart in my hands because the dough doesn’t rise as it would with wheat flour.
But Emily Kate’s cupcakes are soft and fluffy. Their cake has flavor: a sharp tang cuts the richness, another rarity in the gluten-free world.
By my first bite I was hooked.
What people don’t tell you about developing serious food allergies later in life is that they reshape your entire attitude toward eating. Food is no longer the reliable shot of dopamine to cap off a hard day at work. In college, I used to whip up pasta in bulk, mastering recipes from movies on Netflix or attempting to create dishes reminiscent of Anthony Bourdain’s latest episode of “Parts Unknown.” But finding gluten-free items requires research and new methods of cooking.
Robin Knight, owner of Emily Kate’s, gets it. Her two daughters, Emily and Kate, were diagnosed with celiac as adolescents. The news shook the bread-loving family, especially Knight, who struggled to find gluten-free alternatives for her children.
“It was really tough,” she said. “When my oldest daughter was diagnosed with celiac, she went right to, ‘I’m never going to have another cupcake.’”
As my dad has done since my own diagnosis, Knight fell down the rabbit hole of trying to “fix” the problem.
“I’m trying to make a decent cupcake for a kid who is sad about no more cupcakes and I’m looking around at what’s out there and thinking there’s a huge gap in the marketplace for food that is good and delicious and not full of mold inhibitors or other things you don’t want to put in your body.”
She learned about methods that allowed rice flours to build the texture of a traditional baked good and realized finding other proteins and juices to bind the dough were healthy substitutes to chemical-filled ingredients.
In 2015 she opened Emily Kate’s bakery in Prairie Village, hoping she’d help other struggling parents. The shop took off. With regional deals to major retailers like Whole Foods, they expanded into a Kansas City, Kansas, wholesale bakery. Now they’re looking to move up the street to a bigger location and start shipping nationally this summer.
“The demand for gluten free has always been there but the availability has not,” Knight said, standing toward the back of the kitchen as three young women in aprons decorated cookies.
The demand is so great that Knight can barely keep up. Their new 45,000 square foot plant will help them fill orders, she said, and provide a cozy retail space for people to pop in and purchase a cupcake or a coffee, instead of having to order over the phone.
“More and more products are available and every bit as good as gluten baked items,” she said. “…People used to just go without. But now they don’t have to.”
Now, she can buy imported chocolates and expensive flours that make her baked goods feel no different than any other quality bakery. Her small team of young women have larger bowls and are no longer scooping cookie dough by hand or fighting for space in the kitchen freezer.
Michaela Sewalson, 30, the kitchen trainer and social media manager, said diet trends have spurred the growth in gluten-free products. But she’s most impressed by the gratitude of customers with food allergies.
“People get emotional. It’s crazy that what we do can mean so much,” she said.
On the day after the Super Bowl victory parade last week, she showed me their new Red Zone cupcakes, Kansas City Chiefs-themed with red, white and gold cream cheese frosting swirled on top ($19.50 for half a dozen).
“There’s some real science in this that I won’t be able to get into,” she said. It’s a secret.
Just as I remembered, the cupcake was thick and fluffy, but not too dense. It didn’t crumble in my hands.
Yes, it’s only a cupcake. But there’s something remarkable about being catered to despite a complicated diet. It makes life sweeter.
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 5:30 AM.
