Usually, when a person wants to find vegan and/or gluten-free desserts, they have to look somewhere in the downtown core of a big city. There, the opportunities to find baked goods that fit your body’s needs are typically easier to find than in the suburbs.
That is, of course, unless you’ve got Jaclyn Douglas in your neighbourhood. The owner of Cup of Tea Bakery in Whitby regularly offers this town of just more than 100,000 a body-friendly alternative to their favourite desserts. “It started with some gluten-free baking in 2011,” she says, “and then I took it over in June of 2013 and I made it completely gluten-free at the beginning of 2014. Basically, I purchased the bakery because it was a bakery…and the more that I listened to customers, I realized how sick individuals could get, and by listening to their stories, I wanted to make sure our bakery was 100 per cent gluten free.”