The Teacher-to-Baker Arc

Before the cookies, there was a classroom. Athena spent her days as a kindergarten teacher, and baking was the thing she came home to — a way to be creative, to shake off the day, and, she'll admit, an excuse to eat a warm cookie straight from the oven. "There are few things in this world that taste better," she says. Some hobbies stay hobbies. This one had other plans.

The turn came in 2021, when Athena learned she had a gluten allergy and set about changing her diet for her health. The hard part wasn't giving up gluten — it was everything after. Gluten-free baked goods, she found, too often ask you to settle: for a drier crumb, a stranger flavor, a cookie that reminds you with every bite of what it's missing. She wanted one that didn't.

So she went into the kitchen and stayed there. Batch after batch, she reworked the recipes until they cleared a bar most gluten-free baking never reaches — her own.

"After some trial and error, I crafted what I believe are the best gluten-free cookies around," she says. Friends and family agreed, and kept agreeing, for years: you should sell these.

In February 2026, she finally did. The Gluten Free Goddess is a cottage bakery run out of Athena's Minnesota home — a business she launched while raising her one-year-old son, alongside the high school sweetheart she'll mark twelve years with this year. Every batch is baked by hand and built on one stubborn rule: a gluten-free cookie should never feel like a compromise. Soft, indulgent, full of flavor. No apology in the first bite.

It's the perfect way, she says, to stay connected to her creative side through motherhood while baking for a community that's spent too long settling. And if you ask her what you're getting, she doesn't hedge: "My gluten-free cookies are truly fit for a goddess." The oven's already warm — leave her a note with your order and find out. 🍪