I don’t really understand my food allergy. I don’t know if I’m gluten-intolerant or have a wheat allergy or am simply carb-sensitive. But I do know that I get headaches from eating bread products and that I feel a lot better when I don’t eat them. So I’ve joined the growing legions of people who avoid foods made with flour. In my quest to avoid headaches but enjoy eating, I’ve baked with spelt and rice flours, potato starches, and all sorts of gluten-free grain replacements. I give every wheat-free pre-packaged baked good a try and am usually sorely disappointed. Dry, crumbly nondescript “bars” without personality are the punishing norm.

Then Regan (CHOW’s associate food editor) handed me a brownie from the San Francisco-based Crave Bakery, which specializes in wheat-free, gluten-free and casein-free (or milk-free) products. Their brownies are rich, dense, and creamy–all of the things that the crumbly bars are not. Here are the ingredients that made it that way: Bittersweet chocolate (chocolate liquor blended with potassium carbonate, sugar, cocoa butter, soya lecithin), cane sugar, organic palm oil (non-hydrogenated), free-range eggs, organic brown rice flour, organic fresh ground flax seeds, aluminum-free baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium acid phosphate, potato starch), sea salt.

We've created our ideal (wheat-filled) CHOW brownie, but for wheat-free, we go for these.

– Meredith Arthur