Move over, Mrs. Fields. Emily Mainquist wants to take away your spotlight.

The 2004 Dulaney High School grad has parlayed her love of baking -- and her dedication to veganism -- into a business called Emily's Desserts.

She already is selling her wares through Wegman's, and she just closed a deal with Whole Foods, said the 23-year-old resident of Hunt Valley.

Her goal is to be like Mrs. Fields, the nationally known corporate purveyor of cookies and confections.

"I want to be everywhere," she said. "When people think desserts and cookies, I want them to think Emily's Desserts."

If Mainquist makes it to the top, she'll make it on the backs of her baked mini-doughnuts, her gluten-free doughnuts, her chocolate-covered pretzel rods and her "cruelty free" cookies, as she calls them.

A sampling includes oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip cookies, coconut-cranberriy cookies and cherry-chocolate-pecan cookies that have no animal products in them -- just like the rest of her products.

"A vegan cookie means no butter, no eggs, no honey and no gelatin," she explains on her Web site, www.emilysdesserts.com. "The fact is these cookies are good for you, better tasting and are better for the environment. Undoubtedly, these cookies will be the best you will ever eat."

The cookies are perfect for people who are allergic to dairy products and eggs, she said. They're also "great for people who have high cholesterol because the cookies don't have any."

The sweetener that she uses -- agave -- doesn't cause spikes in blood sugar levels, so it's suitable for people with diabetes, she said.

Noting that she was once a devotee of butter, she said her vegan desserts are delicious. "You can't tell the difference," she said.

Considering the health benefits of her baked goods, it's not surprising that Mainquist chose to start her own bakery in the carriage house of the Ruscombe Mansion Community Health Center, in Baltimore, last September.

It bills itself as "the oldest and largest holistic healing center in the Mid-Atlantic.

Most days, she's there from 9 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m., she said. "I'm baking the whole time. I don't sit down at all -- I have a power bar for lunch."

She may spend her days with her own creations, but she hasn't become jaded, she said.

"I'd rather eat a small salad so that I can have a big dessert. I love it. This is what I can eat."

If she hadn't decided after graduating from high school to head to California and culinary school instead of staying in Baltimore, she might now be slaving in the kitchen of a restaurant instead of owning her own business she said.

She earned straight A's at Dulaney. She had been accepted by Towson University and the culinary school, but she opted to get married instead, and stay in town even though her husband, Paul Dabrowski, was willing to go to California with her.

"I realized how far away California was, and I didn't want to leave my family," she said.

It wasn't an easy decision, she said. She spent a considerable amount of time asking God what he would have her do.

"I believe that God is shaping out lives," she said. "Everything that happens, happens for a reason."

She and her husband have been married almost four years now. He's a sales engineer.

"He does his thing and I do my own thing, but eventually I would like him to quit and both of us do this."

After graduating from Dulaney, she started a small-scale dessert business offering cakes and pies. She was trying to build her portfolio for culinary school.

"First it was neighbors, then a couple of car dealerships," she said. "It really took off."

She has always loved baking. Half of her family is Italian, she said, and her grandmother, Nancy Ercolano, often told her, "'Why don't you bake cookies instead of playing games?"

Her grandmother was in the kitchen from 6 in the morning to 7 at night, she said. "She loved it. That was her life."

But Mainquist had to abandon her fledgling baking enterprise when she took a job as a customer service representative for a business supply company.

She became a vegetarian about three years ago, she said, after researching something on the Internet. She stumbled across information about factory farming and "how immense amounts of animals are being tortured and then slaughtered.

"Like most of the population, I had no idea what farm animals go through before they get to our dinner table," she said. "I wouldn't be able to put in print what goes on.

"The day I saw that I thought, 'That's it, I'm not eating meat, not one last chicken wing or one more hamburger.' I was done."

Last August, after hearing former model Heather Mills speak on animal rights, Mainquist said, she became a vegan. She decided to have a cruelty-free diet and avoid even dairy products, at home and in her business.

"You have to walk your talk," she said.

"I feel so much better from the inside out. I feel clean; I don't feel heavy after eating. I'm not putting toxins or antibiotics in my body."

When she discovered there wasn't a tasty enough vegan product to satisfy her sweet tooth, she said, she revisited the idea of a dessert business.

She and her husband had contemplated selling their condo in Highview in Hunt Valley to finance the business, but the market was bad, she said.

The answer to their prayers came through a chance encounter with an older couple they met when she and her husband went for a walk.

"They had sold their home, and they were looking for a place to stay for six months," Mainquist said. "They ended up renting our place while we lived with my in-laws, and they ended up investing in our company."

She wondered how things would have turned out if she and her husband hadn't taken a walk that day, she said.

"They were such nice people. They went to Grace Fellowship, the same church we do. I took it as a sign from God that we had to do this."

To reach Emily's Desserts, call 443-858-7045 or go to emilysdesserts.com.

---

user comments (0)