By Khalida Sarwari
If you’ve got a sweet tooth but those pesky allergies are getting in the way, a new bakery in town will let you have your cake and eat it, too.
Imagine It Bakery bills itself as an allergy-friendly bake shop, shying away from using ingredients in their cookies, cakes, muffins and scones that cause common food allergies.
“It’s for anyone with food allergies or people who still want to eat baked goods but want to eat healthier,” said Jolynn Spinelli, who owns the bakery with her husband, Carlos Negrete, and their friend, Tracy Horton.
The three owners are offering their baked goods at local farmers markets but hope to open a store soon, said Spinelli. They are looking into opening one in the Campbell area, the central point between San Jose, where Spinelli and her husband live, and Horton’s residence in Campbell.
In the meantime, Spinelli is sharpening her baking skills, while Negrete is putting his efforts into his coffee roasting company, Cosmic Coffee Company. Horton is taking on the marketing duties, but she’s also trying her hand at baking, said Spinelli.
“She’s a good baker, but she’s never baked allergy friendly before,” Spinelli said.
Until fairly recently, Spinelli had not either. The idea for such a business came about almost by chance. Spinelli and Negrete owned a restaurant called Cafe Panini in Honolulu, Hawaii, and while they were there they had numerous friends and customers tell them that they or their kids had food allergies.
“They can’t eat anything or they’ll get sick,” said Spinelli, citing wheat, gluten, soy, dairy, tree nuts, eggs and peanuts as the most common allergens. “They were constantly being left out,” she said.
Then about three years ago, Spinelli started doing research on the issue and began developing recipes for allergy friendly versions of popular sweets. When a man approached them about purchasing the restaurant from them, Spinelli and her husband didn’t take too long to say yes. They sold the restaurant nine months ago and moved back to California in September after living and working in Honolulu for the past eight years.
“It came about at a good time, and we wanted a change,” said Spinelli.
Spinelli and Negrete began selling their products at various farmers markets in March. Their bakery items vary from the run of the mill to the exotic. Alongside chocolate chip cookies, they offer quinoa raisin–the Imagine It Bakery version of the oatmeal raisin cookie–and also the funky monkey–a banana chocolate chip cookie made with sunflower seed butter and sea salt.
Their muffins are just as nontraditional, with flavors such as coconut, orange-scented olive oil, matcha green tea with cranberries and lemon hemp seed.
“Several kids in the past couple of weeks, they tried our products and they come back the next week,” Spinelli said. “We’re starting to get a few regulars; it’s pretty wonderful.”
Imagine It Bakery is available at the Saratoga farmers market on Wednesday afternoons; Campbell farmers market in the Pruneyard Shopping Center every Thursday evening; and at the Willow Glen farmers market on Saturday mornings. The bakery is on the waiting list for the Sunday morning farmers market in Campbell.
