That was all before, as she puts it, she bought herself a job - setting up shop in a converted bungalow next door to the Berwyn Fire Company.
It is a shipshape space, rolling pins stowed next to baking pans, long pastry tables paralleling the stack ovens.
But it's a block or so off Lancaster Avenue, the main drag of the Main Line, so after a Caribbean vacation with her husband, Chris, they painted the stucco a deep lavender with lime window trim; partly as memento of the colorful cottages they loved, partly to stand out as a commercial, not a residential, location.
Rick Nichols: The shop is sort of tucked off the beaten path. How do people find out about you?
Kim Cuthbert: By now it's word of mouth [mostly from the Merion Tribute House to beyond Paoli]. But then sometimes, people waiting for their cars at Tires Plus down at the corner smell the baking and wander down to check us out.
R.N.: I bet it didn't hurt to have your rosy, three-tier wedding cake on the cover of Philadelphia Magazine in 2005.
K.C.: No, I think we got maybe five new weddings out of that. What I wish I had the film of, though, is the NBC10 interview they did with Will Smith. He was eating one of my muffins at the time, and kept saying, with his mouth stuffed, "Boy, this is good!"
R.N.: When you started out you were making six or seven wedding cakes nearly every weekend. That must have been a killer pace.
K.C.: I had to go for a better balance in the business - retail, wholesale, the cakes, and Internet sales. You throw a son into the picture [she and Chris have a son, Jordan, now going on 7] and you can't be here until 2 and 3 in the morning every weekend.
R.N.: What does Jordan think of the business?
