Off The Wheat Rises: Blaine Caravaggi Expands from Union Square Market to Wholesale Muffin & Cake Batters

After years of selling gluten free, healthy sweets and eats, Blaine Caravaggi, owner of Off The Wheat, is shifting her focus from retail to wholesale, selling frozen muffin and cake batters to hotels and restaurants.

“They buy it and they keep it frozen; they bake it off as needed,” Caravaggi says. “It’s much too hard to ship a finished baked good, in terms of breakage, perishability and high cost.”

Caravaggi will continue selling retail to local shops and eateries, and is currently in talks with a large cafe opening in Noho this fall about supplying her muffins, cakes and other baked goods and batters.

On Fridays and Saturdays, you can still find Caravaggi at the Union Square farmer’s market, which is open year round, where she sells delectable creations, like flourless coconut cake with chocolate ganache, blood orange olive oil cake with orange glaze, organic tart cherry oatmeal cookies, brown butter toasted coconut muffins and cheddar and chive cheese bombs with roasted Hudson Valley maitake mushrooms.

“That will continue, probably for at least another couple of years,” she says. “If it’s local, that’s one thing. But when a lot of overnight, second day shipping is involved, it’s too dicey.”

Caravaggi typically ships muffin and cake batters overnight to places like Swifty’s Restaurant in the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. “Right now, the Colony gets a lemon blueberry batter, that’s also dairy and sugar free and an organic banana dark chocolate batter that has no refined sugar and is dairy free, and an olive oil cake batter that’s dairy free,” Caravaggi says. “ And then they’ll probably change it up for the season, when the Fall comes.”

Batter, which comes in 5-pound bags, comes with instructions on how to bake it and Caravaggi tailors cooking times and temperatures to their equipment, whether it’s convection or conventional ovens.

“You thaw it out and then you portion it out however you want,” Caravaggi says. ”It either works as a cake or a muffin. The Pink Paradise café at the Colony Palm Beach does muffins whereas the restaurant does the olive oil cake.”

Storied Culinary Background

Before starting Off the Wheat, Blaine worked with her husband Robert at Swifty’s Restaurant, their popular eatery on Lexington Avenue in New York City, from 1999 to 2017. A second Swifty’s opened at the Colony Hotel in 2019.

Great culinary skills seem to be in Caravaggi’s blood.

Working out of her own kitchen, Caravaggi’s great grandmother, Mary B. Merritt, started Merritt’s Beaten Biscuit Company in Montgomery, Alabama, which eventually expanded to serve over 600 stores.

Her great, great aunt Fannie Merritt Farmer, published The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, which came to be known as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. For her part, Caravaggi started making her own flour blends,mostly from almond, coconut, regional organic oat and cassava flours, to create flavorful and moist muffins and cakes that are never dense, dry or crumbly. Before long, she was selling them at the Union Square market.

“That was such a great proving ground for me,” she says. “That’s where I started, essentially in 2019. And the loyalty and amount of return customers is pretty unbelievable.”

Healthy and Sustainable

Everything Off the Wheat sells is gluten free and many products are dairy free, vegan and keto.

“I have several products without any sugar, so it’s very diabetic friendly, but still sweet,” Caravaggi says. “We use sweeteners like organic golden monk fruit, allulose, and some stevia. We stay away from sugar alcohols because they can wreak havoc on some people’s stomachs.”

There’s a growing market for healthier food, notes Caravaggi.

“Even people who aren’t actually diabetic are really just trying to eliminate sugar wherever they can, as often as they can, without sacrificing flavor and texture,” she says.

Animal welfare and sustainability are also top priorities for Caravaggi who sources her ingredients from local Hudson Valley farmers.

“A lot of the dairy products that I buy are from farms that are Animal Welfare Approved, which is a designation that you can’t pay for; It’s an independent organization that audits businesses to make sure that it’s as humane as possible.”

Off The Wheat uses eggs from Gail’s Farm, a small farm in Vineland, New Jersey, which also sells at the Union Square market and is the only no-kill chicken farm in the country.

“When the hens can’t lay eggs anymore, they don’t become stew hens,” Caravaggi says.

If she can’t buy local ingredients, Caravaggi makes sure they’re fair trade and organic.

“But I try to be as local as possible,” she says.

Aside from the joy of cooking and nourishing others, Caravaggi strives to reach maximum sustainability, supporting local farms and animal welfare. “That’s 80 percent of why I got into this,” she says, adding, “We have a lot of vegan items that are popular with people, whether they’re vegan or not. You can’t really tell that they’re vegan.”

You can find Off the Wheat products and Blaine Caravaggi at the Union Square greenmarket, Union Square and 17th  Street, Fridays and Saturdays, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. under the famous purple tent or shop online at offthewheat.com Note: some items must be ordered in advance for pick up at Union Square.

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