Amy Fenster Brown bakes cupcakes, birthday cakes, brownies, shortbread cookies, and more, and “you literally would never be able to tell the difference if you didn’t know they were gluten-free,” she avers. “The guests at my fortieth birthday party ate a giant banana cake with caramel frosting and chocolate decorations. Not one of them knew it was gluten-free -- and after I told them, they ate seconds.
"Brown has just debuted a web site chock full of dessert-porn photography (brownsugarbaking.com) to showcase her skills, and just begun baking and selling her gluten-free treats at the St. Louis Sippery & Café at Plaza Frontenac.
Like many others, Brown has celiac disease, but she has embraced the challenge by crafting a staggering menu of gluten-free cookies (peanut butter, almond shortbread, etc.); cake balls and cake pops; whoopee pies; peanut and coconut “Sweet & Salty Bars”; and the ubiquitous cupcakes (the cake might be vanilla, chocolate, banana, lemon, or red velvet, and the homemade frosting comes in vanilla, chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, mint, lemon, orange, cream cheese, lemon cream cheese, or cinnamon cream cheese).
Her “gluten-free s’more” is a homemade marshmallow dipped in chocolate and crushed almonds, clinging to a shortbread cookie. Her “peanut-butter-cup surprise” cupcake has a peanut-butter cup embedded halfway down in the cake, chocolate frosting, and more peanut-butter chunks on the top. Her “Fauxstess” (above) is a tribute to a certain processed lunch-bag dessert, with a filling of vanilla or cream cheese-buttercream frosting.
Hungry yet?
Brown says she got serious about baking after having a child. “When I gave birth, I became everything I used to mock,” she says. “I had to bring a cake to school for my kid’s birthday, and I wanted my kid to have the cutest treats in the school.”
“I posted pictures of the cakes on Facebook,” she explains, “and people would e-mail me and say ‘my kid has a birthday coming up, can you make me something?’”
She’s been baking goodies nonstop for friends and family for almost two years, she says, and now that she’s at the St. Louis Sippery, her desserts are flying off the counter. (You can request a particular dessert at her site, she says, and she’ll bake up a batch you can pick up at the café. You can also request egg-, dairy-, or nut-free treats, all of which she's prepared.
And, she will also bake your SO a batch of "conversation hearts" Valentine's Day cookies, inscribed with any messages you desire (and we do mean any), but, as Animal House's Doug Niedermeyer would have put it: "...decorum prevents us from listing them here."
Brown is not known to her friends primarily as a baker, however. She is known as a riotously funny woman.
Some bon mots from our interview:
-“Our favorite preschool teacher was moving away and I was mad, so I made her dog-bone-shaped cookies that read ‘BITCH’ and put them in a dog bowl and gave them to her. She loved them.”
-“Chelsea Clinton had an $11,000 organic, gluten-free, 500-pound, four-foot-tall wedding cake. Wish I would have had that order.”
-“It’s amazing how good a tiny little treat can make people feel. Cupcakes make people feel special. They also make them feel fat, but they feel special first.”
