Carolyn Haeler

Mightylicious Gluten Free Cookies is the creation and passion of founder, Carolyn Haeler.  A lifelong foodie, Carolyn’s love language has always been baking.  In 2012, at the age of 31, she was diagnosed with celiac disease - a diagnosis that would change her life for better and for worse. 

After 9 months of illness, she was finally able to heal her body from the inside out. Carolyn became passionate about functional ingredients, nutrition, and living a gluten-free lief.  Of course, this came with challenges. She found that many gluten-free products on the market were uninspiring when it came to taste and texture.  For someone who’s love language is baking, this broke her heart.  She didn’t mourn for herself, she mourned for the thousands of children and adults who are diagnosed with celiac disease every year, who would never know what a delicious cookie, cake, muffin, etc. should taste like. 
 
In 2017, Carolyn purchased a box of store-bought gluten free cookies which she opened on her way home from work. The cookies were so stale and bland that she threw them away immediately.

In that moment, Carolyn decided that she could and would do better.  She left her lucrative job in finance at JP Morgan and spent 4 months baking 15 hours a day, until she had created the perfect gluten free cookie. 

She was on a mission. Through this process she learned that the key to GREAT gluten free baking was in the flour blend. You see, rice flour, the most frequently used flour in gluten free baking, is manufactured for cooking, not baking.

This means that the rice particles are not milled fine enough to absorb moisture and homogenize with the other ingredients when baking. This meant that other flours, such as sorghum, garbanzo bean, and amaranth flours would need to be used.  Simply put, these flours don’t taste good. They often have chalky or gritty textures and strange/bitter/earthy after tastes. They are wonderful for cooking, but far too overpowering for the delicate flavor profile of a cookie or cake.

This is where determination and innovation were married. Carolyn went directly to the mill to get rice flour that would work for baking, and created a gluten free flour blend that looks, tastes, and behaves like wheat flour.  The result is a cookie that is delicious, indulgent, and better-4-you. In 2020, Carolyn was asked by Whole Foods Markets to create a vegan and gluten free cookie.  Unsure if this was possible, she turned to her grandmother’s 100-year-old family recipe for oatmeal coconut cookies.  To her surprise, with a few adjustments her innovative flour blend worked brilliantly, and today Vegan Oatmeal Coconut is her best-selling flavor. 
 
Mightylicious hit the shelves of Whole Foods Markets Northeast division in January of 2018, just 6 months after Mightylicious was Incorporated. In 2021, Mightylicious raised $5M in capital via crowd funding site Republic.co.

She is the first female, LGBTQ+ member to achieve this milestone. Today, Mightylicious is sold in 43 states, including Hawaii and Alaska, and is still operated solely by Carolyn herself.

Following on the heels of MIGHTYLICIOUS GF cookies, Carolyn Haeler launched 3 New Gluten Free Flour blends: All purpose GF flour, Vegan All Purpose GF flour, and GF Brownie Mix- She cant keep them in stock!