Rhoda Mazerolle slips on some gloves, puts on her hat and gets to baking.
She’s busy filling orders for Thanksgiving and a couple birthdays. Her cafe in Dade City looks more like a kitchen with a storefront. All her baking supplies are kept in cabinets. Her ingredients are pre-measured in glass mason jars.
Hillbilly Farms offers a little more than your average roadside pitstop. All of the store’s baked goods sold on site are gluten-free. Rhoda even does custom orders of pies, cakes and cupcakes.
For Rhoda, it’s more than a dietary fad.
“We have Celiac Disease and in order for us to enjoy baked goods, and something that tastes normal, that was our inspiration,” she said.
Before Rhoda figured out she was allergic to wheat, she had awful migraines and vision problems. It got so bad, she was hospitalized.
“I had a real bad episode of distorted, scrambled vision,” she said. “I thought I was having a stroke.”
Doctor’s couldn’t find a answer, but once a family member was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, Rhoda eliminated wheat from her diet.
Everything changed.
Her migraines were gone, her vision restored. But with her new diet, she had a hard time finding gluten-free desserts that weren’t dry or brittle. So she decided to make her own, and use her mother’s recipes as inspiration.
“All of our basic cake recipes originated from her recipes,” Rhoda said.
That means whoopie pies, cupcakes and even the mac and cheese all go back to mom’s farmhouse recipes, each with a little gluten-free adjustment. Because of course, mom knows best.
“Mom had the best tasting recipes,” she said.
It took Rhoda and her daughter almost two and a half years to make Mom’s cakes without gluten, without sacrificing moisture or taste.
After trial and error, and many cakes later, Rhoda created her own secret ingredient - a cake enhancer. It’s a special mix of modified food starch, sugar and pure extracts.
Now, her cakes and other cake-like products will last up to seven days in the fridge. Rhoda says they could last up to six months in the freezer, but her product flies off the shelves too quick to test that theory.