About

Hi, I am Brianna.

I have always loved baking and cooking. Always. When I was a little girl, I used to “cook” using an empty bookshelf (or my bed) as my stovetop while wearing a “chef hat” (actually a doll dress) on my head. I was also caught “cooking” while on a camping trip with my parents: I put the carrot sticks in the skillet and filled our jug of milk with gravel. Once I got big enough to use a real stove, my food tasted slightly better. Now I think it tastes a lot better.

Did I mention that I come from a big family? I’m the oldest of 9! When I was a teenager, my family discovered that some of us had problems with wheat and gluten. Then we found out that almost everyone in the family did, myself included. I haven’t ever been diagnosed with celiac disease, but my maternal grandma has been. Since my mom and so many of my siblings have problems with wheat and gluten I assume that I celiac disease, and eat as if I do, even though I haven’t been tested because I had already cut wheat out of my diet. I’m looking into doing the genetic testing since I don’t have to be eating gluten to get a positive.

Relearning to make my favorite things was really hard at first, but now it’s become a lifetime passion of mine to make gluten-free taste better than anything I’ve made before.

I grew up in the beautiful New Mexican desert(aka the Land of Enchantment, bring on the chile!), which is where I met a tall handsome man with curly brown hair in Christmas of ’09. I was just out of highschool but it was nearly love at first site. I fell head over heels for him!

We got engaged 11 months later, and married 4 months after that in March of 2011. (wedding and engagement photos were taken by Jones Photo Art. They are super talented and they travel too!)

 

I’m also mommy to 2 sweet little girls and one angel baby.

Our adorable 3 year old daughter, Miss E, was born in Spring of 2012.

When she was just 3 month old I started going really, really stir crazy! I was a new stay-at-home mom and my husband was working and finishing up his last semester of business school. Right up until Miss E was born I was working and going to culinary school, not spending a whole lot of time at home. Now I was home 24/7 with a tiny baby and I was going crazy!

Right about that time I discovered Pinterest. And I found a blogger on Pinterest that I LOVED, Something Swanky! I started following her, seeing all of her baking adventures with her daughter. I thought to myself, “I could do that.” So I did! I started Flippin’ Delicious as a creative outlet, baking and blogging during Miss E’s nap time.

When Miss E was just over a year old I took a break from blogging and started my own gluten-free baking company, Brianna’s Baked Goods. It was a fun adventure, but short lived. I had to bake out of a community commercial kitchen that was 36 miles away from where we lived. It was too hard on our family, so I stopped after just a few months.

Days after I “closed” Brianna’s Baked Goods I found out that I was pregnant. We were very excited to add another baby to our family. I was just starting to get back into blogging, and started working on a cookbook concept.

Then in Mid October 2013 when I was 11 weeks along I found out that my baby had died.

The months that followed were some of the very hardest. I grieved, and then became very depressed. I ate way too many gluten-free brownies. And cookies. I gained weight, and people started asking me if I was pregnant. Please, don’t ever ask anyone if they are pregnant. Every time that happened I spiraled into deeper depression and cried buckets of tears.

I also started eating gluten again.

The day I found out that I wouldn’t get to meet my baby I just didn’t give a damn about how sick eating gluten would make me. On the way home from the ultrasound my husband drove me through the Panda Express drive-thru and got me some orange chicken. And for dinner I had my favorite pizza from Dion’s. I’m pretty sure some cookies, potato chips, and ice cream involved too. All the comfort food!

And then I didn’t get sick.

It is so much easier to not eat gluten-free, and it is a lot less expensive. So I just stopped eating gluten-free.

In December, about 6 weeks after I lost my baby, I started to feel nauseous. I thought for sure I was pregnant again. I remember taking pregnancy test after pregnancy test, taking the last test on Christmas morning. They all came back negative. Then I started having some digestive issues and I realized that something other than pregnancy could be causing my nausea. I cut back on gluten, and my symptoms went away.

To give myself purpose and to distract myself I began developing all of the cookie recipes for The Essential Gluten-Free Cookie Guide, with cute little Miss E helping stir the dough and taste every cookie. I developed all of the recipes in The Essential Gluten-Free Cookie Guide between November 2013 and February 2014 and finished my manuscript up in March.

By that time I was pregnant with my second daughter, Baby/Miss T. My rainbow baby.

I had a relatively uneventful pregnancy and Baby T was born in November of 2014.

 

 

I have to admit that I occasionally ate gluten while I pregnant with Baby T. As long as I didn’t eat it every day I didn’t feel like it was hurting anything. I didn’t get sick. At first.

Then a few months ago my celiac mom discovered that she now can’t have dairy either. That really made me change my attitude about eating gluten-free. I realized that even though I don’t get sick every time I eat gluten, it still was doing damage to my digestive system. I made a decision to be strict with cutting the gluten out of my diet. If I have to make a choice between occasionally eating gluten for a few years and then not being able to eat cheese, or eating no more gluten but being able to enjoy my favorite creamy cheeses for the rest of my life, I’m going to choose the cheese.

So there you have it, I feel like I’m a poser, a hypocrite. Eating gluten-free is really hard sometimes, and I haven’t always been diligent about it. But I am a real person, and I want my blog to be real too. Now you know the real me.

I love creating gluten-free allergy-friendly recipes for snackworthy meals and desserts that taste just like what I had when I was a kid. I love sharing my recipes and ideas here on Flippin’ Delicious. If you have a favorite childhood recipe that you have been craving a more allergy friendly version of send me a message or post on the Flippin’ Delicious Facebook page. I love to hear your ideas!

My husband is my skeptical gluten-eating taste-tester. I always ask him: “Does it taste gluten-free?” If he likes it, than it really must be good.