Her goal? Simple: to bake something so good, so outrageously moist and delicious, that no one—no one—would suspect it was gluten-free.

By 2010, my brother Jeffrey and I knew she was close to cracking the code. So we jumped the gun (as children do) and built the brand: Steiner’s Coffee Cake of New York—now Steiner’s Baking Co. Nanci, ever the realist, tried to keep our feet on the ground: “You know, I might not get this right…”