Cake Decorator Plans To Open Business In Snow Hill

By BRIAN SHANE
The Daily Times of Salisbury

SNOW HILL, Md. (AP) -- An award-winning cake decorator is opening a bakery in Snow Hill, where she'll feature her jaw-dropping and delicious 3-D cakes.

Patti McDermott, 26, is planning for an early September opening of her shop, which she will call Miss Patti Cake. It will be located on Green Street, between the American Legion and Sassy Girl boutique.

The word is already out in town, where residents are watching closely the crews setting up inside the 1,500-square-foot storefront.

"People are ordering from all over. They know that I'm in Snow Hill, so they're asking if they can pick up at the shop in Snow Hill. And I'm like, `Well, not yet,' " she said with a laugh.

At the bakery, she said she can work with any budget for her lifelike specialty cakes. Average cake prices will run from $25-$100. If it's elaborate and time-consuming, the price goes up.

"For whatever a person's willing to spend, I can make them something," she said.

Even though she and her husband Billy, an attorney, make their home in Snow Hill, she had seriously considered opening her shop in Ocean City or Berlin.

But it was the enthusiastic support from Snow Hill Mayor Charlie Dorman that swayed her to pick Snow Hill.

"He's been an enormous help," she said. "He's been pushing it all along. Everyone in town hall has been so supportive of it. Calling us up and saying, `I will do anything I can to make this work' -- you know, you can't say no to an opportunity like that."

Dorman said when he learned about her cake business and that the couple lives in Snow Hill, that's when negotiations began.

"I said, `We want you to be in Snow Hill. What can we do to make it happen?' And they were responsive," he said.

The town offered the McDermotts financing in the form of a low-interest loan for small businesses.

"We wrap our arms around all new businesses, trying to get them into town," Dorman said. "We're helping them any way they can, and everybody is just delighted that they're coming to town. It's just amazing."

The site of the new bakery formerly housed a consignment shop, a florist, and for many years, a Western Auto shop.

"It'll be a place where people come into work, they get a cup of coffee. The only place we have to get a cup of coffee now is McDonald's," Dorman said.

Suzanne Timmons, owner of the adjacent Sassy Girl boutique, said she's excited about the new neighbor.

"I'm looking forward to having something new here in Snow Hill. To my knowledge, there's never been one here before, a bakery. ... I think any new business that comes in the town will definitely increase traffic for all of us," she said.

With the shop opening, McDermott also hopes to start a cake donation program to kids in local hospitals. She wants to call it Angel Cakes.

McDermott has an art degree, but she found her passion in cake decorating after falling in love with the cake-decorating reality TV show genre.

Thinking she could do just as well as the contestants on shows like "Cake Boss" or "Ace of Cakes," she enrolled in culinary school. It came naturally to her, and she found work as a full-time cake decorator in 2008.

She and her husband settled in his native Snow Hill, where she's continued to take orders online at www.misspatticake.com.  She also has been continuing to hone her skills once a week at Kake Korner in Laurel, Md. -- a three-hour commute that should be ending once the new shop gets going, she said.

McDermott is an award-winning decorator. Her most recent awards came in May, when she ended up winning several best-of divisional ribbons at the 2012 Great American Cake Show, including the grand prize as the overall winner for specialty cakes.

Information from: The Daily Times of Salisbury, Md., http://www.delmarvanow.com/

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)