Sweet Freedom Bakery

Allison Lubert and Heather Esposito’s Sweet Freedom Bakery (1424 South St.) opens tomorrow, Jan. 15. This unique bakery whips up cakes, pies, cupcakes, muffins, cookies, and other treats which are vegan and gluten-, soy-, egg-, dairy-, corn-, peanut-, casein-, and refined sugar-free.

So, if you have a food allergy or other dietary restriction that keeps you from going Cookie Monster crazy at traditional bakeries, Sweet Freedom will be just that — sweet freedom.

Sweet Freedom Bakery sent me a box of goodies to sample, so I could get the word out and share my thoughts with y'all. (Yep, that means I ate for free.)

I'll start by saying all of the baked treats are good, and, with the exception of the cupcakes (it's so hard to make perfect cake even with dairy, eggs and wheat flour, let alone without all the traditional cake ingredients), I would have had no idea that these baked goods were gluten-, soy-, egg-, dairy- and refined sugar-free unless someone told me.
Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting - A dense and healthy-tasting banana bread studded with chocolate chips and frosted with a not-too-sweet and not-too-chocolaty frosting missing the silkiness of traditional dairy-based frostings. Vanilla Cupcake with Creamy Vanilla Frosting - The neutral vanilla cake base is not quite as dense as the Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcake, and would be a great way to highlight more exciting frosting flavors than the barely-sweet non-silky vanilla I sampled. I'm thinking lemon or strawberry frosting.Magic Bar - A bar cookie with hints of toffee in the the cookie bottom, topped with a rich chocolate ganache and sprinkled with shredded coconut. Magic!

Blueberry Oat Crumble - A bar cookie with generous blueberry filling topped with a crisp oat crumble. This was my favorite goodie in the box. So good I included two pictures so you could see the glorious blueberry goo. I wish I had a whole box of these.Macaroon - These small silver dollar-sized macaroons are light and airy in the middle with toasted edges, and only slightly less sweet than most macaroons you encounter...which is not a bad thing at all. Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich with Chocolate Frosting - Two large crispy chocolate chip cookies sandwich the same not-too-chocolaty frosting used on the Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcake. Gluten-, soy-, egg-, dairy-, corn-, peanut-, casein-, and refined sugar-free? You'd never know.

Sweet Freedom Bakery
1424 South St., Philadelphia, PA 19146
215-545-1899
Tues-Sat, 10am-7 pm
Sun, 10am-4pm