Inventing their cake and eating it, too

BURLINGTON -- Chocolate cake was Patsy Rosenberg's addiction. A very good addiction. Until she got food allergies.

Not only did Rosenberg's body begin rejecting chocolate, it also was rejecting seafood, nuts, and anything dairy- or egg-based. Doctors told Rosenberg that she could no longer have even a bite of chocolate cake. If she did, her body risked going into an eosinophilic reaction, and it could kill her.

The former chocoholic "was sentenced to the fruit plate," she said. "I like fruit, but I don't consider it dessert."

At celebrations, she could not eat brownies or cookies. At birthday parties, she couldn't have cake. Others eating the goods in front of her felt bad, and Rosenberg mourned.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. She started munching on chocolate mix just to have something. Then she started experimenting, making cakes without eggs or dairy products.

The first few cakes were bad; the next few were awful -- so said her daughters, Sara and Caroline.

"The first weren't even cakes," said Rosenberg, calling them "charred-looking things that went into the garbage."

But after several months, she got the right mix and had her cake back. She took the cakes to parties, and eventually people star t ed preferring her cakes to the regular ones.

Out of that experience was born a company.

Today, Rosenberg and her husband, Chip, own a Burlington-based business that offers natural baking mixes for those with food allergies that, many observers say, taste like the real thing. Cherrybrook Kitchen, named after their home street in Weston, produces frosting, cookie, cake, and pancake mixes that are wheat-based and gluten-free. They are also vegan and kosher -- and free of peanut, dairy, egg, and nut ingredients.

Parents magazine said the mixes "taste really good." A Family Circle magazine reviewer "couldn't taste the difference between these and the real things." And now their brownie mixes are winning acclaim from specialty magazines.

In the two years that Cherrybrook has been in business, the company has grown from two employees to seven. Sales have grown more than 400 percent in a year's time. The mixes can be now be found in national chains, including Whole Foods, Wild Oats, Kroger, Super Target, and Giant Eagle.

Chip Rosenberg said he was skeptical at first when his wife approached him about the idea of transforming her mixing experiments into a business. "I thought it was nothing," said Rosenberg, who was in real estate before becoming president and CEO of the company. "We had no idea."

But the couple started doing research on food allergies. They discovered that around 11 million Americans are affected by some type of peanut, dairy, egg, or nut allergens. There were very few dessert products for those with food allergy, and the ones that were available weren't very good.

The Rosenbergs dove into their project full time. They learned all they could about government regulations, food industry lingo, and nutrition requirements. They put together a budget and figured out how to weigh their products.

In September 2004, they baked for a week and took their goods to a food expo in Baltimore. The couple designed their booth and passed out samples to anyone who came by. After the show was over, major distributors expressed interest.

"We went with a hope and a dream," said Chip. "And we came away with a company."

They started in 200 stores, but now are in 3,500.

Patsy said her trick in getting the mixes to taste close to the real thing was to test them on her daughters and the neighborhood children. That's because children will be honest. "If they don't like it, they'll tell you," she said. "Not like adults."

The decision to make their product kosher was easy for the couple, who are Jewish. Without dairy and with a few adjustments, they meet the standards.

After two years and many taste tests, Chip said, his wife is convinced that their mixes taste good. The challenge now is to convince consumers who may balk at the idea of peanut-, dairy-, egg-, and nut-free.

"You get the food into their mouths," said Chip Rosenberg. "That's our motto."

The Rosenbergs said their next step is to expand the company by getting their products in more stores and developing new mixes. Just recently, Patsy Rosenberg completed her original and multigrain pancake mixes. The taster? Her daughter Sara.

The 10-year-old said at one point she had to eat 8 1/2 pancakes in a row. "They were a little crumbly at first, but then they got better," she said.

Now, Sara said, they taste like the real thing.

But after her pancake marathon, she's done. "I don't like pancakes very much anymore."

Russell Contreras can be reached at rcontreras@globe.com.