Cake Therapy
Cake Therapy is a heartwarming and uplifting podcast that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. Hosted by Dr. Altreisha Foster, the passionate baker, entrepreneur and advocate behind Cake Therapy, this podcast is a delightful blend of inspiring stories, expert insights and practical baking tips. Each episode takes listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing and connection through the therapeutic art of baking.
Cake Therapy
The Cookie that Changed Everything: Carolyn Haeler's 'Mightylicious' Story
"That's the best gluten-free cookie I've ever tasted." These powerful words from a Whole Foods team leader changed everything for Carolyn Haeler, launching her from disappointed celiac patient to revolutionary force in the gluten-free baking world.
Carolyn's story begins with a devastating health diagnosis that transformed her relationship with food. After months of declining health—gray skin, falling hair, and a failing immune system—she was diagnosed with celiac disease. Suddenly, food wasn't just nourishment or enjoyment; it became a potential poison. The world of convenience, celebration, and simple pleasures closed its doors.
The defining moment came during a particularly frustrating shopping trip. Exhausted and hungry, Carolyn spotted a beautifully packaged gluten-free cookie with an artisanal backstory and a hefty price tag. Her excitement turned to disappointment with one inedible bite. "I need a cookie," she realized, "and the world needs a cookie." Not just any cookie—one that could heal both body and soul.
What followed was four months of relentless experimentation in her Manhattan studio apartment. Through countless failures, Carolyn discovered something revolutionary: the chemistry for gluten-free baking simply didn't exist. Most rice flours are milled for cooking (thickening sauces, creating tempura), not baking. By working directly with California mills to create baking-specific rice flour and developing her own flour blend, she eliminated the grittiness and bitter aftertaste plaguing gluten-free treats.
Today, Mightylicious Cookies has expanded beyond cookies to flour blends and brownie mixes, with products in Whole Foods and 400 Kroger locations nationwide. But perhaps most powerful is Carolyn's message to young women: "The world is going to tell you you need men and that there are these rules... that is a lie. You are all you need." Her journey reminds us that limitations can become launchpads for innovation when met with persistence, passion, and the courage to fail and try again.
Try Mightylicious products today and discover how gluten-free can truly be delicious, or create your own healing through baking with our Cake Therapy app. Your taste buds—and soul—will thank you.
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Welcome to the Cake Therapy Podcast a slice of joy and healing, with your host, dr Altricia Foster. This is a heartwarming and uplifting space that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. The conversations will be a delightful blend of inspirational stories, expert insights and practical baking tips. Each episode will take listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing and connection through the therapeutic art of baking. There's something here for everyone, so lock in and let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back to the Cake Therapy Podcast. I am your host, altricia Foster, and I am excited to be here. I'm really excited to speak to you again, to have you here from our guest today, carolyn, and I can't wait for her to hop on and so you guys can hear from her. But before carolyn gets here, I want to remind you guys that we are available on all um. Wherever you get your podcast, please go ahead and subscribe. If you haven't downloaded our app yet, it's the cake therapy app. You can listen to us, you know, through our app, as you bake your cakes, our app is AI generated, so you get to be as creative as you want. So please go ahead and subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcast, and don't forget to support the foundation. Buy me a coffee. That money doesn't come to me directly, it goes to the foundation. So it helps us to really buy ingredients to have our weekly sessions with our girls. So weekly now we're about 20. We meet 20 girls weekly, so your donations really go along, believe it or not, it does. So today's guest comes through a unique alignment that I'm really, really grateful for. I say really a lot, but I am grateful for this. I think she is truly inspiring, someone who has actually revolutionized gluten-free baking and made it not only possible but downright delicious. Yep, she's mastered the art of making gluten-free desserts.
Speaker 2:In this episode, we're joined by Caroline Hila. She is the founder of Mightylicious. Her journey is an interesting one because it started by way of a challenge, so we are going to delve into why. How did my Delicious come to be? And we're hoping that the conversation will help to celebrate her. Celebrate her revolutionary decision to really change her life and how she's turned her passion for baking into a lifelong mission to create a product that would rival the best out there. So, in 2017, she took a leap of faith. She left her career in finance to start my Delicious, a brand that is really about innovation. Just like cake therapy is about innovation making sure that we are tapping into alternative forms of therapeutic activities, so so is my delicious. So we're going to hear all about her journey today.
Speaker 2:I want to know what are some of the challenges um leave in the comment. Leave questions for her. She will follow up after. What are her greatest triumphs? And you know what do we need to change about our thinking as it relates to gluten-free treats. So, guys, um, carolyn is here. Welcome to the podcast, carolyn. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I know we have the one and only carolyn hayler from my delicious cakes. Do I have that correctly? Um, carolyn, it's actually my Delicious.
Speaker 2:Cookies, my Delicious Cookies.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. So welcome to Carolyn Haler from my Delicious Cookies.
Speaker 3:Thank you for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am. I'm particularly thrilled, like I mentioned at the top, of this is that our listeners get excited to hear from guests like you, so let's dive into the conversation. So how are you doing, like, where are you right now? We're in the state.
Speaker 3:I am in Manhattan. We are doing well. It's cold here. I think everyone's dealing with this full force winter that we haven't had in quite a few years. I have a three-year-old and a eight-month-old, so I have a three-year-old and a eight-month-old, so I am busy with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we record from Minneapolis, minnesota, so you know, oh, yes, we get excited when we get like 30 degrees, because yesterday it was 30 degrees and everyone was showing out. They were like popping out without a coat.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's real winter.
Speaker 2:We don't not wear coats here, I know, so tell me, yeah, yeah, tell me something fun. Like what's really lighting you up right now, like what?
Speaker 3:but tell me something that you're really excited about right now oh, I guess it's like you know, such mom stuff my, my daughter just turned three, and three years old is so much fun. All of a sudden she's got like you know, she was always so wonderful but now she's got all this vocabulary and she understands conversation and she's so funny. We took her skiing this weekend and that was hilarious. Just watching my three-year-old struggle with her slippery skis and watching her be so proud of herself I mean that sort of this is my first three-year-old. This is my oldest daughter, so just seeing this face is so exciting. You know they're so cute when they're babies, but now seeing her sort of turn into this human being is just so wonderful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so have you always lived in New York.
Speaker 3:I have. I am from New York originally. I am from what New Yorkers would call upstate. I'm from Westchester, though that is not upstate. New York goes all the way to Canada people. It's a very large state, so I grew up in a suburb of Manhattan. I grew up about an hour north of New York City. I've lived other places, but, yeah, I've been in Manhattan since 2010. So, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:So you've had you've lived in Manhattan since 2010,. But you've had such a wild career shift yes, you know the world of finance to becoming the force and I mean the force behind this successful gluten-free cookie brand. Take us back to what little Carolyn was like, like who you were before you delved into cookies and what made you go into finance.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've always. I love that word force. I've always been a force, definitely. Like as a little kid I was very shy. I've always been an introvert. I didn't have a lot of need to talk as a child but you put me on a soccer field and I would knock everyone over, like I've always been a brute strength type of person and I always wanted to be a CEO, always my whole life, like that's what my dream has always been.
Speaker 3:I love business, I love numbers, I love statistics, but I also love art. I have a dual degree in studio art and economics, so I'm very passionate about both of those things. Hard to sort of find that combination in the work world. So I majored in those in college, was able to really explore that as a young adult and then went into consulting, learned a lot about logistics and supply chain as a in my twenties and then went to business school and just learned through that process that I would probably, with my personality type, do well in finance and I did.
Speaker 3:I love there's so many things about finance that I loved. I love the markets, I love economics. Obviously I love numbers and I. But I also love dreamers and one of the things that people don't understand about banking or it doesn't really get portrayed in the media. Or in the media or in movies. Is you always like see these terrible bankers are always like ruining stuff. Yeah, and they do.
Speaker 3:I was there from 2010, right after the financial crisis, so I saw a lot of like bankers can ruin stuff. I get it, but, at the same time, like my job as a banker was really to make people's dreams come true, and so I love working with clients and I was a true banker, whereas I was in private banking where I was the one working directly with the clients. I was a relationship manager, and whether you're in the commercial bank or the investment bank or the private bank, people come to you and they either have a dream of buying a home, or they have a dream of starting a company, or they have a dream of building a brand new building in Midtown Manhattan, and the bankers are the ones who help facilitate that through capital, and so I love that. That was like what really was rewarding to me about banking. I love dreaming, I love having ideas and make bringing things to fruition, so that was really exciting.
Speaker 3:But I realized through that process I was in banking for a decade I was like you know, I really want to be the client. I don't want to be the baker. I want to be the one with the dream. I want to be the one starting the business. I want to be the one taking the risk, and but I didn't have. I sort of knew that in business school as well, but I didn't have the risk. And but I didn't have. I sort of knew that in business school as well, but I didn't have the idea. You really need something that can become your life when you start a business it's your life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's on vacation. There's no like downtime. I'm the CEO of a company, so if something goes wrong, I'm it. So I was actually diagnosed while I was in banking with celiac disease and I'd been eating a gluten full life up until that point and I had the opportunity to travel and live in different countries and eat all the pasta and the croissants and the paquettes and everything that makes life enjoyable.
Speaker 3:And then all of a sudden that was taken away. And I think a lot of people understand celiac disease and gluten intolerance as being bread and cookies and pasta and cake. But gluten's in everything. It's used as a color, as a filler and as a preservative. So it's in Coca-Cola and ginger ale as caramel color, it's in cinnamon as a filler, it's in cold cuts as a preservative. So basically everything that we consume has gluten in it.
Speaker 3:And so all of a sudden you go from being living a lifestyle where you can grab things like we live in a very convenience oriented lifestyle, especially when it comes to food. When you're getting up at 5am to be at work by 630, you know, and not getting out of work until the sun is already set, you know convenience matters to you. You don't have a lot of time to sort of be prepping food and you're grabbing things and eating when you can. And so all of that was really taken away from me. And not only was the convenience taken away, but the quality of the food was also taken away. Of course I can eat things like vegetables and fruits and meat, and I do eat those things, whole foods, but when it's five in the morning, you want to be able to grab something and like run out the door, you want a bagel when you're tired, you want to be able to go home and just like, not think about it, and have a slice of pizza. All of those things are really important to how we sort of soothe ourselves as adults and how we sort of manage our lifestyles.
Speaker 3:And when that's taken away, you feel it and I don't want to be dramatic because I realize that disability is a very real thing but when you have something like celiac disease and you can't manage it, it starts to feel like a disability, because if I don't, if I eat something that has gluten in it, I react in 180 seconds and I'm like I I'm flattened, I'm on my, on my back and I am sick.
Speaker 3:For, you know, several days I'm functioning, but I'm still very ill, and so it's becomes not like it becomes a really big hurdle in your life. Every single day I am always thinking about gluten and what I eat, to the point where, like I can't travel to hotels anymore because there's just not enough options for me to be able to eat in a hotel. So when I go on vacation I have to find an Airbnb or someplace that has a kitchen. All of these things start to like work into your life and all the things that you used to take for granted no longer take for granted. And all the things that you used to take for granted no longer take for granted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it seems like your celiac diagnosis was actually a huge turning point for you. Take our listeners back. You talk about the changes that you have to make in terms of if you travel and staying in hotels. Talk to us about that moment. How did it shift your relationship with food and ultimately, you know, with baking?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it shifted my relationship with food dramatically. Up until that point I was sort of a hobbyist baker. I wouldn't say that I was an expert baker, but it's something that I definitely enjoyed and would do. Like people go on vacation and I would want to bake, right, and I would go to the beach during the day, but then I would want to come home and make cookies or cakes or pies. It's something that I did to decompress and that I found really relaxing. But it was definitely something more of a hobby.
Speaker 3:And when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I mean I was very sick. My immune system was failing, my skin was gray, my hair was falling out. I was very, very sick. And it took them nine months to find the diagnosis. And at one point the doctor looked at me. I'd been tested for everything. At this point he goes maybe you have HIV. And I was like ha ha, maybe you shouldn't just blurt that out like that. That's a very sort of shocking thing to have to you.
Speaker 3:So when I was diagnosed with celiac disease, it was such a tremendous relief, just given how sick I was. But I realized that I had to heal my body with food and the way that it changes your relationship to food. Food is now poison to me. A cake which is celebratory and so much fun and like associated with like happiness and celebration, is poison. Food is poison to me, is physically killing me if I eat anything with gluten, which is most things. So that is a dramatic shift in the way that you look at food and approach food. So now when I sort of think about eating, it's not just about satisfying my emotional, physical needs, it's about really healing my body and keeping my mind. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I like how intentional you are, though, about healing your body Once you recognize that you had this um, you have celiac disease. You got received this diagnosis. It seems like the force that you are came into um in view, I would say and you started to find ways to be able to respond to this diagnosis. So I was reading where you talked about a defining moment where you bought a stale store-bought cookie. Yeah, yeah, there were many of those, but there was one specific one. No, but they were so awful that you had to go out there and start my Delicious Cookies. What was going through your mind then, when you decided to just leave it all, you know, leave finance and just go into the kitchen?
Speaker 3:That's a very good question. So everyone's had a bad gluten-free cookie or a bad gluten-free product and when you have celiac disease or gluten intolerance, those experiences really build on your psyche and you realize how important a cookie becomes. You're like oh man, today I just did a cookie and I was. I had transferred jobs and I was at a company.
Speaker 3:I really didn't enjoy and that I didn't want to be there, and so I've sat in my job, which had never really happened to me before. I'm a pretty focused, passionate person. So I was in this place where I was like I don't like this and I don't know what I want to do next, which for me was very hard. It was Christmas time and I was shopping, and I've been shopping all day, and it was like three o'clock in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten anything and I was like starving and there was a hundred people in line in front of me and that made me sad. I was hungry and cranky and I didn't like my job. And so I saw this package of gluten-free cookies in front of me and I pulled them off the shelf and I was like they're beautifully packaged and had this great story about an artisanal chef and they were like $10. And I was like this is great, I'm going to have a cookie. I can't believe this gluten yet. And I take a bite and it was so just inedible that I didn't even chew it. I sort of like spit it out. And I was like, oh man, now I have to buy these cookies. I'm not going to eat them because I can't even swallow this. And that was the moment that I was like you know what? I need? A cookie. I need a cookie and the world needs a cookie. The world deserves a gluten-free cookie that's delicious and wonderful and nourishes your body and heals your body but also nourishes your soul, which is often lacking in the gluten-free industry, even though there's a lot more products, oftentimes they're a bit disappointing versus exciting and happy and all those things that you want a cookie to be.
Speaker 3:And so I left my job and I spent three or four months just baking from scratch and sort of creating all these disastrous recipes until I was. I learned through that process that they're really the chemistry for gluten free baking doesn't exist. It's everyone taking sort of the chemistry for gluten baking and trying to fit it into gluten free, which doesn't work, yeah. And so I you sort of have to start from scratch in developing the recipe and the ratios. Chemistry is, baking is chemistry. It's a science. It's all about weight and moisture and it's mathematical and very technical, which is up my alley. It's also very much an art form. So these things sort of came together and married for me as I'm going through this process. But I spent three weeks, three months, three to four months, sort of just testing in my studio apartment in my 24-inch oven in Manhattan, recipes and I finally had a recipe that was delicious and I'd been selling it at farmer's markets and I can make it over and over again, which is one of those things a lot of people take for granted.
Speaker 3:In baking, you might be able to make it once, but making it again can be very, very tricky if you don't know the exact ratios and measurements and even like things like barometric pressure and the humidity that day can impact your baked goods. So I put my cookies into a tinty coffee bag and bought on Amazon and I put a label on the front and walked into the Whole Foods on 86th street, which is just like 10 blocks from where I lived at the time, and I was looking for feedback. You know doing some prototyping, which is what they teach you in business school. You know, come up with a product, come up with a prototype, get feedback, refine, feedback, refine, um. So I walked into the whole foods, I went to the information desk and they're like oh, go talk to Chris. He's behind the bakery counter, he's the team leader, he'll give you feedback. So I was like Chris and he was behind the bakery counter, behind the cakes actually, and I was like I make gluten free cookies. I'm looking for feedback.
Speaker 3:He tasted my cookies. It was my brown butter chocolate chip, which is the first cookie ever created. He goes well. That's the best gluten free cookie I've ever tasted. I want you to go down to Union Square into Brooklyn and ask for the team leaders there and if we all email the regional office, they might onboard you to our. They have like a local supplier program for Whole Foods. Okay, great. So I ran down to Union Square, I ran to Brooklyn and this was on a Thursday and they were onboarding me by Monday.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that is awesome. You know, like in our industry, I can take a good trial and error, like we have to try in the kitchen, because with Sugar Spoon Desserts Girl, I'm in there trying and testing recipes just to make sure that they're the best of the best, that they're even sustainable once they leave my kitchen. So I do get it and I do love the idea of perfecting a recipe with just pure determination and just jumping when the opportunity arose. Tell me, share with our listeners, though, what was your trial and error process like in creating that first gluten-free cookie? What were some of the biggest oops?
Speaker 3:It was painful, I gotta tell you, because when I started I wasn't even using a scale, like once I learned that you had to use a scale. That sort of changed everything. So just everyone who's listening, buy a scale off of Amazon. They cost $19.99. It doesn't have to be expensive and if you want to bake and you want to bake consistently, you have to use measurements. You have to use grams. Grams or ounces, grams are probably better for home cooks. That was the biggest change for me, because up until that point my cookies always came out too dry and stiff and that's because I was using too much flour, which is the hardest ingredient to measure using a cup. Yes, because you're always probably putting in too much flour, like a quarter cup. It just there's no way to measure flour, the cups you have to use weight. So then I got the scale. You have to use weight. So then I got the scale and then I realized the biggest hurdle was actually the flour blend, because there's so many flour blends out there for gluten free.
Speaker 3:And everyone you buy, whether it's Bob's, red Mill or King Arthur or Namaste, they're all different. They have completely different ratios. They even have completely different ingredients. Bob's has multiple gluten free flours and they all have different ingredients and different proportions.
Speaker 3:So the flour you use dramatically impacts the outcome of product and it wasn't until I created my own flour blend, where I had complete control over the ingredients that went into the flour blend and the proportion of grain to starch, to gum, that that sort of stabilized my recipes and allowed me to create something that only had the flavor but the texture that I wanted in that final outcome. Yeah, that was the biggest turning point and I mean this is why it took like four months and I baked every day, like I was used to getting up at 5 am and working until like 8 or 9 and then coming home. So I would get up at 6 in the morning because, cause I, that's what my body clock did, and I would bake until, like I dropped, like like literally I collapsed in the in the evening and I had like mountains of cookies just like falling all over the place, like there's nowhere to put them in your studio apartment.
Speaker 2:So were you like giving friends cookies Like here take it. Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:The foreman anyone who would take them. Some of them, in the beginning, especially some of them, were so terrible that I was like just throwing the bell. I was like that's not food, that's not no, yeah, but it worked, it was. You know, there was a lot of disasters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but let's. But you didn't. Just Now you've created gluten-free. What flour blends and mixes? What is the inspiration behind you expanding and have people responded to your products? Kindly Let us know.
Speaker 3:Yes, so yeah, I mean I expanded because there was demand for it. I often people often ask me like there's a lot of gluten-free products out on the market. There's a lot of gluten-free cookies, and everyone tells you that their cookie tastes good and it doesn't. So me telling you that is not going to convince many people.
Speaker 3:It's certainly going to convince me as someone with celiac disease, and so I learned that, in order to like tasting my cookies, most people taste them and they have this similar reaction to the you know, the people at Whole Foods. Well, that tastes really good and it can't even tell it's gluten-free, which is exactly what I'm wanting from the cookie that it's not just a good gluten-free cookie, it's just a good cookie. Anyone can eat it. That was my goal. So, but getting people to taste it is harder than you might think, because people have had really bad experiences in the gluten-free segment, and certainly I understand that.
Speaker 3:That's why I created this company and so created this company, um, and so I tell people about my flour blend and how we, so I started telling people about my flour blend, and what makes my cookie different is that we actually work directly with mills in california to mill our rice flour to a spec that it can be used for baking. Most rice flour, which is the base of a lot of gluten-free flour blends, is actually milled for cooking, so it's milled for like thickening sauces or like creating kompura. It's not made for baking and it's not milled or fine enough to bake with. In order to bake, you need the dough to homogenize with very quickly, especially for cookies. Homogenize and become this a solid ingredient, and a liquid ingredient needs to homogenize and become a dough and then transform into a cookie when it's baked. And if your rice flour isn't fine enough, it'll just be grainy and grainy and it won't work which is what often happens, and so I figured that out.
Speaker 3:It took me months, eventually figured that out. We started. I started searching for really high quality rice flour and then realized that even the suppliers of it couldn't guarantee the quality, that I had to go directly to the source.
Speaker 3:What that allowed had to go directly to the source, what that allowed me to do. Now that we have this rice flour, we have this eye chain of rice, really high quality rice flour. It means that I don't have to include any ancient grains in my flour blend, and I have nothing against ancient grains. I love quinoa, garbanzo beans, amaranth, sorghum, all those things are great. They just don't belong in a cookie, and it's because a cookie only has salt and really vanilla as flavoring, maybe some inclusions, and vanilla is like a perfume. It's a very, as you know, it's a very delicate flavor, and so when you introduce something like even garbanzo beans, which I love, you get a very earthy flavor and a very chalky texture. Sorghum has a very, very bitter aftertaste, and so instead of tasting this beautiful floral vanilla flavor and the chocolate essence that comes with the chips, you're just really tasting the sorghum. And if you eat gluten free, that becomes a dominant sort of experience because your taste buds become sensitized to it and it becomes very negative, to the point where people are like I don't even want to eat a cookie, which should, no, that should never come out of anyone's mouth, and so one should never say no to a cookie. And so I was able to get this really high quality rice flour, rice flour which allows me to only use rice flour as the grain, brown rice flour and white rice flour. And then we use some starches, which means my flour blend has a completely neutral flavor. It's a neutral taste. It also has a very fine texture, so there's no grittiness. So all you taste of the cookie. Our chocolate chip cookies just taste like chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal coconut cookies just have that wonderful coconut flavor. They're very mild, very light. There's nothing distracting you from the cookie experience. Which is why people say to me I can't tell it's gluten free. It's because they're not having the negative texture experience or also not having a negative aftertaste experience that often comes with different flour blends.
Speaker 3:So I tell this story to people and then they go oh, do you sell your flower blend? And I was like well, I should, shouldn't I? Because that's the key. And I was actually at a trade show last year and when a buyer from Kroger came up to me and he was like I love your cookies and Kroger is like a holy grail yes, it is. If you know retail, kroger is a holy grail.
Speaker 3:And he was like do you make the flower blend? And I was like, yes, because we do, we always make it for ourselves. I just all I needed was packaging. So I very quickly went and created some packaging and sent him some samples and so I had all those sample bags. I was like, well, because it costs the same price, it's the same amount of money to buy 500 bags versus one One in my bag, same amount of money to buy 500 bags versus one one. And, yeah, 500 of all the of the flour blends I'd created and just put them on my website and my brownie mix sold out like sells out like every month like we had to like buy packaging.
Speaker 3:That's how well received it was. Just without any marketing, without any like notification. People have found it, they've loved it, they demand it and now it's going to be in over 400 Kroger locations nationwide. Can.
Speaker 2:I be you. Let me be you for a day, just one day.
Speaker 3:I mean all that comes with hurdles. I mean it's been a process, but yeah that was, I mean it's. The response was people have been asking for it, including, you know, retail commercial people are like we don't have this, we need this, and both our direct customers online and our retailers have really responded well to it.
Speaker 2:Do you think your background in finance is really helping you shape how you move this business? Because for me, like my background is in, like science and virology, so I'm moving with the public health, knowledge of food and impact on girls and lives. But tell me what's pushing like. Do you think finance background is really teaching you, helping you propel this business forward?
Speaker 3:I do think so. Yes, I mean, the hardest thing, as you know, is the financing. It's the cash flow and the funding and the capital, and I was in private wealth management, which is wealth management and a lot of my.
Speaker 3:I learned a lot from my clients about wealth management, even though I had all the technical skills for stock, for choosing stocks, and you know all the background in it. They really understood business and they would do things that really leveraged the debt side of their balance sheets, even though they were worth a hundred million dollars. They would take out a mortgage and then use that mortgage, use the proceeds from that mortgage to buy senior secured bonds, and then the mortgage is 2%. They're getting 6% off the bonds, so their float was 4%. I was like that is genius. This person doesn't need that float of 4%, but they're getting 4% off of 20 million that they otherwise would have paid in cash.
Speaker 3:And I was like these people really understand money and how to take every both sides of the balance sheet and really leverage it to create margin. And so I do think that that helped me and also helped me understand like I hear stories but people are like, oh, I sold my engagement ring or I took out a mortgage on my home, which are all very reasonable things to do, but I wanted to avoid as much personal debt as I could and I really understood that there are sort of there's a big banks which everyone sort of understands how to access, but the big banks are far less likely to take a risk on someone like me. They're looking for cash flow and they're looking for stability and they're looking for really pretty mature businesses. But there are lots of smaller banks and investors out there who really enjoy sort of taking the risk on smaller companies and are willing to give smaller loans and debt to companies and founders like me, and I was able to find those. One of them was Wells Fargo.
Speaker 3:Wells Fargo was able to get a small business loan of $80,000 from Wells Fargo, which is not chump change to a small company.
Speaker 2:Definitely isn't, you know. So it's. It's clear that, um, my delicious is isn't just about great cookies, right, it's about a bigger mission to me. That's what I see. Um, what keeps you going? Um, because baking is is so personal to so many of us. We tend to bake for healing. Well, that's what I do. Baking has definitely healed me and we can talk about my book I tell that story in my book all the time how baking has definitely given me, boosted my confidence. It's allowed me to heal. It's a space where I go to center myself. It allows me to slow down, but with my delicious growing leaps and bounds. Like, what keeps you going, carolyn, and how do you hope to impact the gluten-free community going forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what keeps me going is my customer. I really think that one of the things that frustrated me, as someone who is eating the gluten-free products and a lot of the products out there, if you look at them, almost all of them are a parent who has a child with a severe food allergy. So there's a lot of love and a lot of sympathy in these products, but it is a very different experience being the adult with the food allergy and having to heal your body and going through the stress. The needs the physical, psychological and emotional needs of an adult is very different from those of a child. I know that I have a three-year-old now.
Speaker 3:I fully understand, and while those products were good, they really weren't great and they weren't what I needed as an adult in my life. And in addition to me feeling unsatisfied and having a lot of empathy for the other adults out there, it also made me feel really sad for the children who were diagnosed really young and have never had a real cookie, have never had a brownie, don't know what cake should taste like. That breaks my heart because they're being served these very subpar cookies or products that, yes, will nourish their body but not really their soul, and so that has always been what my passion has been about. I was not going to make an acceptable food for a cookie. I want people to taste my cookie and be like that's one of the best cookies I've ever had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3:That's what drives me and I want also like so. Obviously we want things to be allergen friendly and everything certified gluten-free and it's nourishing your body, but I really want to nourish the soul and I didn't realize how important food is even really small, trivial things in your life to just nourishing your soul and your self-esteem and all those things that you said. I love that story because that's why I bake as well. Baking really centers me. It really is. It's almost like therapy.
Speaker 3:Oh, it is therapy, therapy yeah, but food is as well. Also, sitting down to a meal, it's food is celebration of, food is ceremony, food is mental health, I mean, and it's I say. People say, oh, will you eat your feelings? Well, that's a luxury.
Speaker 2:Now I consider eating my feelings to be a luxury, like if you're eating my feelings a lot these days, girl.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, everyone, now everyone is eating their feelings. Everyone's having big feelings and we're eating a lot.
Speaker 2:I know my feelings are so big. Right now I'm eating up a storm. So this is a good segue to talk about the Cake Therapy Foundation. We do use baking to bring joy healing to women and girls impacted by the justice system, but not only the justice system, because right now we're in schools. The Cake Therapy Foundation are in schools teaching middle and high school students just the art of baking. So we're using cake as the metaphor here because there are so many other things that come from cake and the kitchen, and I absolutely love your particular story of resilience and how you were able to pivot once you were diagnosed with celiac disease. Our listeners are young girls. Majority of our listeners are young girls from low socioeconomic communities, but I would want you to share with them, carolyn, words of encouragement. Would you share with them words of encouragement as they attempt to navigate their own personal journeys and being able to, or learning how to, pivot from you know, day to day, as the seasons change for them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have to say that the world is tough on girls. It's hard on all of us. It doesn't sort of matter which socioeconomic you come from. The world has lots of barriers and challenges and injustices for all of us. It's certainly worse for others, for some than for others, but it's hard for all of us. Certainly worse for others, for some than for others, but it's hard for all of us.
Speaker 3:And I just want you to know that this pivoting away from finance, where I mean I had avoided the world is going to tell you you need men. Basically, it's going to tell you you need men and that there are these rules and the men make the rules and men are the steps to getting to where you want to. That is a lie. My words of encouragement is that is a lie. You are all you need. You do not need them. You do not need their rules, you do not need their steps. Those rules are not made as stepping stones for you. Those rules are made to hinder you, to hold you back. Yeah, they're not there for you. So make your own steps.
Speaker 3:If you have an idea and you believe in it, believe in you. You're the only one who has to believe in you and I've had so many people tell me that I wasn't going to make it. Tell me all the risks I was going to have to take. It basically implied that because I was doing something that was risky, because I was a girl, I couldn't do it, because that's how we treat girls.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Something's risky and you could fail. Then a girl shouldn't try, because girls are not allowed to. Let me tell you, failing is so much fun. That's the thing that you learn from baking. You're like, oh man, that was a disaster and it's fine because I learned so much from it and I'm going to try again. And eventually you take all those failures and you turn it into the most beautiful cake or the most beautiful cookie. And you realize that the world telling you you're not allowed to fail is how they're holding you back. So I say go out there, have ideas, take risks, fall on your face, stand right back up and keep going, because that's what's going to get you to your goals. And anyone who tells you along the way that you can't, it's not that they can't, that you can't, it's that they don't want you to. They don't know you well enough to know what you are capable of.
Speaker 2:And that's totally fine. Just smile at them, say thank you and keep going. Yeah, she says that to tell them that it is a lie. It's a lie, you know it is a lie. Practice that. Practice telling them that it is a lie and that you will make it. Caroline, tell us what's next for my Delicious.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know. I'm such a dreamer that I have all these thoughts and dreams, but I definitely there's so many I can't. There's not enough time for this podcast. But definitely new products. We actually are right now developing a brownie. So the vegan, gluten-free brownie mix did so well that I've had people ask for it as a ready to eat product. So we will be launching brownies here soon. And you know, I want to conquer the whole grocery store. Right, I want to conquer the whole grocery store right.
Speaker 3:I want to be in every aisle, I want you to be at every aisle, at the C by Delicious, and I want everyone to be like you know what? I don't need? Oreo, what I need is my delicious. I don't need, I don't need, you know, wonder Bread, I need my delicious bread. You know, I want to. I want to be at the forefront of products that are allergen friendly, better for you, nourish your body, nourish your soul, and that everyone wants to eat them, because they just are fun and great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited about the future for my Delicious and I love how my Delicious came to be, and I honor you for that for putting the work in. I want to thank you for sharing this incredible journey with us today. To me, your passion and your purpose and your perseverance through all of this is really, really inspiring. So before we wrap up, though, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am so excited for you. I think that being young and having all you have the most potential when you're young, and I really miss that. I'm 43 now and I still have potential, but I don't have nearly as much potential and opportunity as I had when I was young. And it doesn't matter where you're starting from. Everyone has all of this potential, and all of what you need is a dream and an idea, and a dream or idea can change whatever you're dreaming and thinking of right now. It doesn't have to be what you're dreaming and thinking about next week or next year.
Speaker 3:But, just have an idea of figuring out who you are and taking those risks and trying things and falling on your face and then standing up. That is what makes life so enjoyable and so much fun, and I envy you and I'm so excited for you and your journey and this life that's ahead of you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much. She says dare to dream. And while you're dreaming, you can dream up some delicious recipes. We have the Cake Therapy app, so go ahead and download that. We have our podcast. You'll hear Carolyn's episode streamed through the app, but you can hear Carolyn's episode and other episodes wherever you get your podcast. So thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for joining us, carolyn. It has been a pleasure. And before you go, listeners, we want to share today's mindful moment. Today's mindful moment is that baking, at its core, is about transformation simple ingredients coming together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Carolyn Haler's journey with my Delicious is a reminder that challenges, much like a tough dough, can be worked through with patience, passion and resilience. So, whether you're in the kitchen or navigating life's uncertainties, remember, the right mix of perseverance and creativity can turn any limitation into an opportunity. Thank you so much, carolyn, for joining us. It's been a pleasure having you here today and thank you, guys, for listening. This has been the Cake Therapy Podcast, your slice of joy and healing. Thank you, thanks, carolyn, thanks Carleen. Today's mindful moment tells us that baking is the art of waiting. Find beauty in the pause, in the spaces between each step.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to the Cake Therapy Podcast. Your support means the world to us. Let us know what you thought about today's episode in the comment section. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and if you found the conversation helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, follow Sugar Spoon Desserts on all social media platforms. We invite you to support Cake Therapy and the work we do with our foundation by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link in the description or by visiting the Cake Therapy website and making a donation. All your support will go towards the Cake Therapy Foundation and the work we are doing to help women and girls. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next episode.