Diabetic indulgence: Bakery makes sugar-free treats

Specialty foods can be expensive and difficult to come by. This is especially true for sugar-free sweets and baked goods, which not only tend to taste bland but are sometimes hard to find. But a shop in the southwest aims to alleviate that.

“It was even harder 20 years ago,” said Mrs. Williams Diabetic Delights Bakery & Candy Shop owner Janet Prusinski. “Diabetics had nowhere to go. Even though things have improved over time, things are still not great for people who want to enjoy a sweet treat but can’t eat them unless they are sugar-free.”

She knew what life was like for a diabetic, as her former husband had diabetes, and her son had to maintain a strict low-carbohydrate diet. She said she remembers purchasing sugar-free treats for her family, but after tasting them herself, she was disappointed with the quality of the products.

“I threw it all away. It was no good to eat, and I couldn’t believe somebody else had made that for people to consume,” Prusinski said. “That’s why we opened the store here, to give people the chance to eat sugar-free treats but to eat sugar-free treats that taste good.”

Prusinski opened the bakery at 3466 S. Decatur Blvd. 23 years ago.

It took a year and $5,000 worth of experimenting with ingredients to get recipes just right. Since then, Mrs. Williams has been providing people with treats such as cakes (including birthday cakes), cheesecakes, pound cakes, cookies, eclairs and muffins, all excluding ingredients such as sugar, honey, molasses, corn syrup or sucrose.

“We opened on April Fools’ Day, which was not a very good idea because back then, everyone thought it was some sort of joke that we could sell baked goods that were sugar-free,” she said. “Nobody believed us.”

From day one, Prusinski has continued to experiment with recipes and add items to the bakery’s list of goodies. There are 30 to 35 kinds of baked goods offered every day.

“I am a picky person, and every single item that we sell has to first be approved by my taste buds first,” she said. “So when we finally sell an item after much experimenting, it is something everybody can enjoy.”

Almost 50 percent of the bakery’s customer base consists of people looking to watch their diet and prevent diabetes.

“The way you know our treats are so good is that people who don’t have diabetes like our treats,” Prusinski said. “Obviously, everyone has different taste buds, so I always encourage people to try something first to see if they like it.”

Diabetics and non-diabetics can enjoy the bakery’s treats also because of their affordability.

“My pricing is the best for sugar-free items,” Prusinski said. “It is much cheaper for my customers to come in and buy bulk candy from me than to shop at any convenience store that may sell sugar-free candy.”

Also available is the nutritional information for every baked item, including the number of calories, fat and carbohydrates.

“That information is crucial for diabetics because, by knowing the amount of carbs something contains, they are able to control their food intake much better,” she said. “By knowing what each item contains, people are then able to better control their sugar and carbohydrate intake.”

Prices for the items at Mrs. Williams are competitive with regular bakeries even though the shop sells specialty pastry products, Prusinski said.

Because of this, Prusinski said people have suggested that she not worry about the customer and charge as much as she wanted for baked goods.

“I was so offended at that,” she said. “My priority when I opened this bakery was to make treats accessible to people and caring about their needs, not charging insane amounts of money. That would have defeated my initial purpose in the first place.”

Hence, the business has not grown into a large enterprise and is a two-person operation, with Prusinski and baker Pepe Medina doing the work. Yet Prusinski said she is glad to have the store open because it fulfills a purpose larger than the business itself.

“I understand the importance of having a bakery like this one not just for me but for those who can have a tasty, freshly baked treat because we have them available here,” she said.

To continue the legacy and ensure that people can keep buying sugar-free items in the future, Prusinski left the bakery to Medina in her will in case anything happens to her.

“I learned everything from Janet and have come to love the work we do and appreciate how unique and important it is because it allows people who cannot have regular sweet treats to enjoy a sugar-free version here,” he said. “It is also something healthy we are doing because we use the best ingredients possible to provide the best sugar-free products for our customers. You don’t see many places like that, so I am very proud to be here.”

For more information, visit mrs-williams.com.

Contact reporter Maria Agreda at magreda@reviewjournal.com or on Twitter at @mjfagre.