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It all started with a misbegotten box of bad muffin mix.

A customer wanted Tavolo Pronto’s Patti Balderas to whip him up some gluten-free muffins for his morning visit to the Fair Haven stop back in 2010.

“I did it and they were awful, terrible” Balderas said. “I said, ‘You can’t really eat that.’ So, I decided to make that (concocting good gluten-free) my winter project when things slow down.” And that she did.

Knowing that gluten-free baked goods were in demand, both by trend and necessity, and good gluten-free seemingly a rarity, Balderas began doing some digging. She dug deep into the gluten-free flour bin to ferret out the taste, after-taste and texture that would not only be edible, but would satiate the most discriminating dessert palate. Drool-worthy is what she was after with her gluten-free products. Sweet baking, dessert making is her passion, after all. She had her gluten recipes down to a fine icing swirl.

“I didn’t know anything about gluten-free, though,” Balderas said. So, she sought out experts in the field. What better expert than a well-known professional whose child had a severe gluten allergy?

That woman was Silvana Nardone, a chef, Brooklyn bakery owner, editor of Every Day with Rachael Ray, and mom to a boy, Isaiah, diagnosed with gluten intolerance at 10.

Balderas found Nardone’s book Cooking for Isaiah on Amazon. “I bought it for 15 bucks and started to develop gluten-free recipes based on it,” she said. “Everything I tried was good, so I stuck with the flour mixture and took it from there.”

They’ve been making the flour mixture in bulk since. “It’s pretty simple,” Balderas said. “It’s a mixture of rice and tapioca flours, potato starch, xanthin gum and salt. But, she (Nardone) is very specific about brands. She uses Bob’s Red Mill rice flour, Shy Little Farms’ Tapioca Flour. And you really can’t deviate or substitute, otherwise you end up with that gummy, slimy texture and bad aftertaste. We started with that mixture and stuck with the same thing.”

The result: gluten-free goodies that people now flock to Tavolo to get. All the baked goods concocting, borrowing, doctoring centered around Nardone’s gluten-free, all-purpose flour mix.

It’s the sweetest pick for Rumson-Fair Haven area dessert connoisseurs. And Tavolo now has a new place in which to bake all the more — Tavolo Forno. It’s across the street in the iconic spot of the old Frank & Anita’s hair salon. More to come on that soon.

Which is your favorite gluten-free treat from Tavolo? Ours is the sour cream coffee cake.