Since the Grand Opening in September, Butter Blossoms Bakery’s business has been ‘blooming’. Hundreds of cookies and cupcakes have been sold, and the Tea Room has hosted lots of children’s parties. Demand has been so great for bridal showers and grownup birthday parties, that they have made the Tea Room available for those events months ahead of schedule.
Downstairs at the Shortbread Shoppe, two large glass cases showcase an assortment of butter cookies, shortbread cookies, and elegantly frosted cupcakes. Cupcake flavors include red velvet, pistachio, chocolate, walnut, and vanilla bean. Seasonal flavors include Carrot Cake topped with Honey Ginger frosting & the top seller, Pumpkin with Maple Cinnamon frosting.
Cookies come in fluted (scalloped edge) circle, square, and heart shapes. Shortbread flavors include classic, honey fig, butter pecan, blueberry, autumn spice flavors. There are also chocolate and chocolate chip varieties. Custom orders for shortbreads and cupcakes are available in any amount. These are seriously elegant baked goods, but formal occasions are not required. Butter Blossoms provides cookies or cupcakes for casual gatherings, for example, book club meetings, cookie exchanges, and wine tastings.
Butter Blossoms’ beginnings are rooted in family tradition. Every holiday season, Shell DiTullio and her three daughters, Emily, Jenny, and Katie, baked hundreds of butter cookies using a cherished family recipe. They would use a cookie press to make spritz “blossom” shapes, bake them, and then decorate them with sprinkles and colored sugars. The cookies would be elegantly packaged in small jars and given away to family and friends. Year after year, creating a baking business would creep up in conversation. Emily would pursue a Culinary Arts career–graduating from Johnson and Wales Charleston campus, and working for the Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort for five years.
Fast forward to 2011. Butter Blossoms was launched on Etsy, and Shell and her daughters were shipping cookies to brides and military families all over the world. If Etsy had just one drawback, though, it was the lack of face-to-face interaction, which a storefront would provide. Butter Blossoms also wanted to expand its offerings to include cupcakes topped with a pompadour of buttercream frosting. It was decided they would find a building and renovate it. The Etsy business would remain active, but scaled back to “Cookie of the Month” packages so the store could have the attention it needed. Shell would run the Shortbread Shoppe, book orders and parties, and manage Tea Room events, while Emily would be the chief baker. Jenny and Katie helped with the store’s social media and pitching in at the Grand Opening party.
Butter Blossoms got help from other local businesses to making the Shoppe and Tea Room a reality. RTD Construction converted the former garden supply store into a white and candy pink store and tearoom. Part of the former building’s wrought iron porch was even incorporated into the Shoppe’s decor. Shell says with it’s a vibrant small business scene and older neighborhoods and oak-lined streets that have so much character, it’s a privilege to have a business located in West Ashley.
 
Butter Blossoms is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. It is located at 1713 Ashley River Road, for more information, call 737-0129 or find it on Facebook

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