Mindful Baking Cafe (Gluten-Free & Vegan)

I have many food allergies including needing to be gluten free. Mindful Baking Cafe Chicago to the rescue! Even though I don't need to be vegan, Diane, the owner of the bakery makes her own mixes that I eat and tolerate well all the time. My husband and I fell in love with her donuts while we were dating and knew we had to have them at our wedding. We got 6 different flavors including: red velvet, chocolate, powdered sugar, brown sugar cinnamon, strawberry, and apple cider. Everyone loved them! We would have used her for our cake as well but fell in love with another bakery for that. We highly recommend Mindful Baking regardless!

I always pick up Mindful Baking's vegan gluten free brownies whenever we're at the same event. They are sooo good! Even my omni husband loves them! Highly recommend

100% recommend Diane. She is a genius and did my parents celiac 50th anniversary cake. Just jaw droppingly beautiful. Her prices are a steal for the work done.

I tried emailing Diane to resolve the issue but it's been months with no response. My wife and I love Mindful Baking so for her birthday we ordered a cake and drove 3 hours into the city to pick it up. We purchased a small strawberry shortcake cake for $65 plus an additional $15 for decorations. When we arrived home, we cut into the cake. At first we thought it was the wrong flavor because the cake was brown. To our surprise, it was actually burnt and the edges were rock hard. The "strawberry shortcake" part was a very thin layer of strawberry jam. The frosting was excessive and overly sweet and the extra charge for decoration was absurd since it was amateurish at best. Previously we had Diane make a chocolate cake for us and it had no issues at all but that was also in 2018. The quality has declined over the years.

Ordered a raspberry chocolate cake last minute for a birthday and was very impressed with the taste. Some folks at the party didn’t like the cake because of the brownie-like texture (empalagoso) but a lot of us still found it to be great. It reminded me of a gansito. The icing wasn’t too sweet or bland and we could taste the raspberry flavor (pink frosting). We noticed that the icing doesn’t do too well in heat so strongly suggest not leaving the cake out longer than an hour if you are outside in the sun or don’t keep your home too cool. I drove with the cake in my car for 1.5 hours with the AC on and it was perfectly fine, so the temperature in our home was the reason for the melting frosting. Would recommend for folks that have nut allergies too!

The cafe had wonderful staff working with me to create my dream vegan birthday cake! Staff was wonderful to work with, had very fair pricing, and delivered the most beautiful vegan cake to my house! I will definitely be returning. 10/10 would recommend!!!

Incredibly slow service. Only 1 staff member who does not make the drinks in the order they were placed so we ended up waiting for so long watching people who came in after us get their drinks. Also $6 for a hot cup of tea with one tea bag is a crazy high price. I could buy a whole box of tea for that. Disgusting cold quiche.

I’ve been to Mindful 5 times in 3 months. The staff member Biff is a doll! The shop is adorably arranged and it feels great inside! But it’s small inside and not conducive to much more than eating/drinking and leaving. It’s not a hang out spot inside. BUT!!! It’s got a great big patio out front though and it’s perfect!! I was there a day ago and spent $62. There were two young girls I’ve never seen before behind the counter. I asked several questions about the food and every response was a giggle with a disinterested “I don’t know”. No idea about ingredients - not even in the Puerto Rican lasagne! She responded as if I annoyed her by asking ‘exactly what is it made of?’ She said- it’s lasagne, but, like PR style” (what are you 9 yrs old?) I asked “well …what is that?” And she said “I don’t know” 🤦‍♀️ Asked how multiple things tasted and she said “IdK never tried it” to 7/10 of the items. One girl worked while the other just stood there. How do your staff not sample your product and can you educate them on what’s in it? Maybe make a flyer for customers to read? You’re a specialty store. People want to know these things. Your service is non- existent and this time, for the 1st time, it’s surprisingly rude. I asked for a box of brownies- specifically with sprinkles. I got home to find chocolate chip Blondie- I got all 3 chocolate.. not what I ordered for a reason. So I called the store and one of the 2 girls said: “ it’s **not a big deal** really because **it’s the same thing**” (are you kiddin me? Please- train your staff!) I said “chocolate chips are not rainbow sprinkles- it’s all chocolate in my hands. I paid for no chocolate in 1. So it is a big deal. I live 40 mins away, how will you make this right?” She said - slowly “well what we *can* do for You is…. (Pause) offer you sprinkles next time you come in?!?” She raised her pitch on the last words making it sound like an excited question rather than a statement. Then she said “Byyyye” and HUNG UP ON ME while still laughing. No kidding. I also plucked a sourdough loaf from the freezer. I got home to find it is not sliced so I had to defrost the entire thing and now I have to eat all of it, before it goes bad. It doesn’t end there though- I cut into it and it is rock solid and dry. $13?? for bread and it is like stiff multilayered impenetrable cardboard. Why call back to remedy this? In my experience- NOBODY CARES or is EMPOWERED to provide good customer service at MINDFUL BAKING if the products are stale or just wrong- It’s sad and her business will not last if the product is dry and there’s no remedy to make it right. And she doesn’t label anything so I have no idea what is what! Drives me nuts! The staff don’t even know which product is what! It’s insanity and hard to shop there. The owner is never at this location and there is no “manager” if you need one. The staff are not empowered to satisfy customer complaints, even at the most basic level. Maybe the owner won’t satisfy them either or doesn’t trust her staff to do it and I see why after today. I honestly don’t know - I’ve no clue how to reach the decision maker and her employees don’t seem to know either. It’s not the 1st time I’ve been unhappy with the product freshness or quality. But I come back because I was loving her meals and soups. Her brownies, muffins and cookies are a win!! But Her products aren’t inexpensive, So I expect them to be top quality. I haven’t looked at the website for contact info. I’m thinking to go without these treats rather than deal with a “hit or miss - no returns it’s too far to drive back” bakery cafe. Her cakes are dense like cornbread and the icing is too sweet but it’s not an easy task to make a fine textured cake without wheat flour or dairy. I just can’t believe that everything but the 2 brownies and the cheesecake, is inedible. The chocolate chip blondie is dry too. The cookies, brownies, muffins and entrees have been good but she had no soups or entrees to buy. Lost sales 🤷‍♀️ I’d planned to drop another $50-60 on meals.

I am gluten-free and vegetarian so when I first learned about this VGF bakery (vegan), I was excited to try it out; so much so that I drove nearly an hour in traffic to try out their cakes and cookies. Unfortunately, I am disappointed. Both items are dry and dense. Gluten-free bakery items have come such a long way and this reminds me of the options available back in 2014, when I first became intolerant. The cake has so much frosting to try and make it enjoyable but I don't like frosting so that's half of the cake removed. I can see why this would be a wonderful option for a kid's party but I was not too happy with it. I did think the prices were extremely reasonable and the variety was great. Service was also friendly.

Great bakery if you have a gluten allergy or intolerance. They have a variety of desserts. We will definitely stop by anytime we're in the area.

This little place was so good. Vegan and gluten-free options. I picked up some muffins and they were amazing. not to mention how adorable this place is. Can't wait to go back and sit there for a couple of hours and have coffee and good vegan bakery dishes.

...this place is cute, but there's almost no seating. Gluten-free friendly but not celiac safe, I ended up feeling as if I would have been happier stopping by Trader Joe's. Full disclosure: I reserved a surprise bag through to good to go. I was excited and drove all the way from Glen Ellyn in traffic to make my 11 am pickup time. There's nothing special here. The cupcake was over sweet. Cloying. Some of the overall feeling came from arriving after 11am (opening time) and waiting for ten minutes before anyone showed up. "We open at 11 today" she said dismissively. "Do you like soup? There's soup today." Meh. Overpriced.

Ugh! I purchased a piece of pumpkin cake at a fundraiser recently and it was worse than eating cardboard! The frosting was good but the color was a bit concerning; it looked like artificial coloring was used - something I like to avoid. However, I didn't realize that the cake was gluten free until after I looked up Mindful Baking online. Definitely make my cake with gluten!

I posted on Facebook that I wanted some vegan, gluten-free Paczki and a friend told me about Mindful Baking. I didn't see any Paczki on the online menu, but I wasn't far away, so I took a drive over. I almost bought something else because I didn't see the Paczkis, but then I spotted them and fell in love immediately. Heck, I don't even care for sweets that much and COVID killed my smell and taste abilities in December, but these babies won me over like crazy. I could taste the filling a little bit, and what I tasted was delicious. The texture was fantastic. When you can't taste much, texture becomes really important! What a great find and pick-me-up! Made my day. Happy Paczki Day!

I ordered The White chocolate strawberry silk pie which was gross. The pink florets had zero strawberry taste just sugar frosting. The white chocolate filling alone was good but the crust was just runny goop. I thought at first it was a caramel layer but it was just soggy runny crust. Also cinnamon graham crackers do not go well with white chocolate pie filling. The taste profile is way off. The Oreo crumble Cake slice had a sticker that said 2010 and after taking a bite I started to wonder if that was the year the cake was made! Lol. The cake was so dry and hard. Super dense without much flavor. The frosting was light and fluffy which made the dry hard flavorless cake even more of a stark contrast. The Sea Salt brownie was ok compared the rest but still tasted old and left a lot to be desired. All items were far too sweet as well. Sooooo much sugar was used. I want to support small businesses and being Celiac was excited to try but it was utterly horrible. Inedible. I can't believe all the good reviews. Either they had a VERY off day. Which I find hard to believe when I tried multiple items or people do not know what good gluten-free baked goods should taste like. They shouldn't be so sweet that the only flavor profile is sugar. Gluten-free cake can actually be light and fluffy and moist and not have a black bean aftertaste. Pie crust should not run out of the pie pan if turned on its side. I have done a lot of gluten-free baking and cooking from scratch for those that aren't gluten-free and they never know it is different. When I requested a refund the owner Diane asked me to come in and give them another try or a refund. When I explained I didn't want to come in as I tried multiple items and didn't think trying anything else would result in a better impression. Once I didn't want to come in she no longer was interested in helping me and told me to contact Doordash for my refund instead of taking care of it for me. She also proceeded to tell me what a horrible person I was because I didn't like her baking. Someone has no idea how to treat people or bake for that matter.

Super kind staff and delicious homemade egg breakfast sandwich! I enjoyed myself and will be introducing my partner to this place.

I hate to leave a bad review for a small business, but I have to warn other customers. I picked up To Good To Go bag and decided to try a cake when I got home. There were pieces of hard inedible material in it! You could easily break a tooth when you chew this cake. This is pretty scary and totally unacceptable!

I bought their assortment of brownies for a friend who is gluten-free - she LOVED them! And so did I! Excellent quality! And so so yummy... I will be back!

Gluten free and vegan options that are delicious say no more come to mindful baking! So delicious!

a fantastic neighborhood cafe with tasty vegan and GLUTEN FREEeee baked goods! I have nothing but wonderful things to say about their pizza crusts, cake slices, coffee drinks, bread, and mini pies! I need to come in some weekend for brunch soon. don't miss out!!

The owner is very sweet and genuine. We excitedly tried three different drinks: the bourban syrup one, the golden latte, and the lavender latte. All three were hits! Not too sweet, unique, and flavorful. Walking into this shop, my expectations were neutral and i was so pleasantly surprised! This is a great addition to Ravenswood. They have vegan homemade food that won't break the bank, tons of vegan options in the fridge/freezer (including vegan ice cream), incense and goodies. The inside has some more intimate seating (bar style against the window). Definitely will be back and explore the menu more.