Give Haley Dye a week's notice and a conversation about what you have in mind, and the custom cakes that come out of Cakes To Dye For can be almost anything: her team has turned out an edible fire hose topped with a fireman's hat, an armadillo, and a full-size cockroach, all of it cake under the sculpting.
Dye trained at Johnson & Wales and ran the bakery out of her home for years before taking a storefront on Fountain Inn's Main Street, where her family has been in business for generations. Custom wedding and birthday cakes are the heart of the work, but the daily case holds more than that: cupcakes, cookies, and pies, along with a caramel pound cake made from her grandmother's recipe.
Customers keep coming back for the buttercream and the gluten-free options, and for an owner who will work from an inspiration photo and talk through the details before anything goes in the oven. The lineup follows the season, too: the sweet potato cake is the biggest fall seller, and Thanksgiving brings pecan, pumpkin, sweet potato, and chocolate peanut butter pies.