Our Story

Photo credit: Ros Marvin Photography

Deliciously Guilt Free brownies started with us adopting a sugar free and low carb lifestyle but struggling to find sugar free baked goods with clean, natural ingredients. Every low carb snack we found was filled with fake ingredients and chemicals, so we decided to experiment with baking our own.

The story of why we make Deliciously Guilt Free brownies goes back to when Basma was pregnant with our first child and was diagnosed with pregnancy diabetes. She followed a strict low sugar and moderately low carb diet during the pregnancy and I was amazed at how much better she felt. After having the baby, we were told she had a 50:50 chance of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. This came as a complete shock to. In hindsight, she shouldn't have been too surprised- "I have always struggled to lose weight around my middle, and I have the strongest family history of type 2 diabetes imaginable." She started researching how she could prevent type 2 diabetes and she came across Dr Sarah Hallberg's TED talk. In it Dr Hallberg described how she managed to reverse her patients' type 2 diabetes low carb diets. It was very moving to watch, and we both realised that we could take our health into our own hands. So, we committed to give up sugar forever, and to cut carbs- so that we would stay well for my young family. But it wasn't always easy. We couldn't find snacks to grab when we was busy- and we didn't have time to make everything from scratch.

Photo credit: Liliana Zaharia Photography

We looked around and found very few low carb snacks in the UK- and the ones we did find were full of fake ingredients, extra protein, or looked like they belonged in a lab. So we decided to make it ourselves. Deliciously Guilt Free’s mission is to hand-make sweet treats, using all natural ingredients that are low in sugar, and low carb. Thank you for trying our brownies, and joining the low carb, low sugar revolution!

How 2020 changed everything

In March 2020 we had a day where everything changed. Something strange was happening on the website and orders were flying in. Until this point we were happy to get only a handful of orders out a week. Dan baked by night and taught during the day plus stood in some political elections here and there. Basma would post out items on her way to the lab where she is completing her cancer research PhD. DGF never paid us a wage, we did it because we believe strongly in making a difference by giving people a healthy alternative to sugar and carbs.

However this day DGF felt like a very different company! We had a seriously growing customer base because one of our customers was singing our praises on a Keto Facebook group. This was exciting, this was also scary as I soon realised that there weren't enough hours in the day to use my hone oven and kitchen table for such a huge number of orders.

As the lockdown set in we found a solution. We moved to a local closed cafe in a village just outside Cambridge. At that time Cafes had to close due to the first lockdown so not only did it mean was could easily find a bigger kitchen, but we could also help another small business at that difficult time.

Within a few weeks the cafe was too small and we had to move again. This time we found a closed soft-play in anther village on the other side of Cambridge and moved to their kitchen turning their cafe into a dispatch area.

For 2 months it was perfect and gave us the breathing room to grow further, at this time I also bought my first two commercial ovens.

We could have stayed there for much longer but then luck struck and a commercial kitchen and warehouse space became available and it’s where we now are based.

So when we put up our sign on the side of our bakery, we didn’t just feel proud of everything we had both achieved. We were also struck by how far we have come in such a short space of time, all thanks to our amazing customers wonderful support.

We are now able to make a living doing what we love and to grow the business and do what I (Dan) absolutely love every single day. We are so lucky and thankful every day.

The Sugar Free Icing on the Cake

At Christmas 2020 we were given the amazing news - Dan has been named a top 10 Foodpreneur by Yahoo Finance. Thank you guys for being on the journey with us. We couldn't have done it without all of your support along the way.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-ten-foodpreneurs-201900896.html

Basma and Dan

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