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Tryon residents Dick and Lynne Perlmutter love to sit on the porch at Valhalla Cakes near downtown for coffee. They sometimes take their one-year-old standard poodle, Pierre, with them.

“He loves to sit on that porch and just watch the world, and everyone admires him,” says Lynne.

Sam Slade is the owner, baker and artist behind Valhalla Cakes, a custom cake shop that also sells baked goods and coffee. As Lynne’s birthday was approaching, Dick had an idea and shared it with Slade, who knew the Perlmutter’s dog from their visits to the shop. 

“I said can you make a cake of Pierre, and she said sure,” says Dick. “She has a mastery of her medium. She knows how to sculpt and she knows what ingredients to use. It’s all edible and the details are amazing.”

When Dick returned to pick up Lynne’s cake, he was impressed with the level of detail, especially Pierre’s eyes and teeth. Slade even put a bow tie on him. She says it goes back to her training as a sculptor and illustrator.

“Honestly, I think the thing I love to draw most and make most are animals, so I like to spend more time working on little details like that just to bring it to life. I just enjoy doing it,” says Slade.

“I just said yeah, that’s it,” Dick recalls thinking when he first saw the cake. Lynne had a similar reaction.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Lynne. “It was just so fun and so well done and so realistic for a cake. How did she even do it, you know?”

Slade says the process began with reviewing about 30 photos of Pierre that Dick sent her. Then, she made a basic form out of popsicle sticks.

“Then I build him out of rice crispy treats and cover that in chocolate and then I do all the fondant work to make it look like the dog,” says Slade.

The Perlmutters say the vanilla cake with vanilla icing and the chocolate Pierre were the talk of their birthday gathering with friends and were delicious, too. 

“I love seeing people be happy when they see the cake that I made for them and worked hard on,” says Slade. 

Slade was exposed to baking growing up in the Chicago area where her father owned several bakeries. She attended the School of Art Institute of Chicago, studying design, sculpture and illustration. Afterward, Slade started working in bakeries and decided on cakes as her artistic medium. She moved to Denver and opened her own cake shop in 2015. She called it Valhalla Cakes because of her love of Norse mythology.

“Valkyries are women warriors, so as a woman-owned business, it seemed kind of fitting. When they die, they go to Valhalla, so it’s kind of like heaven but with cake,” says Slade. 

Slade made cakes for all kinds of occasions, including weddings, birthdays, graduations and baby showers. She even made cakes for the Denver Nuggets NBA team. 

“I was really busy,” she says. “It was awesome. I was doing cakes for shows at Red Rocks and the Pepsi Center and just a bunch of really cool cakes I got to make while living there.”

But in October 2022 Slade and her fiancé Jason Bailey decided to move to his home state of North Carolina and near his hometown of Shelby. They found a house they liked in Columbus. 

“We were kind of over the Denver scene and just wanted a little more space,” says Slade.

She began looking for a space in the area to open another custom cake shop and saw a place for rent at 90 Pacolet Street in Tryon. 

“It popped up and I really fell in love with the town,” says Slade. “It seems like a really great hub for people all around to be able to get my cakes. I just really like the vibe of the whole town.” 

The space on Pacolet Street had been a bookstore. Slade essentially gutted it and came up with her own design that included a kitchen, bathroom, service counters, a display case and seating along one side from front to back. 

“It all came out perfect,” she says. 

After the ten-month renovation project, Valhalla Cakes opened on June 8.

“It’s been going really well. Once people come in and know we’re here they seem to become a regular pretty quickly,” says Slade. “It’s a slow growth but we’re definitely seeing it happen. Every day it seems like there’s new faces coming in and it’s getting better and better. We’re excited.”

In addition to Slade’s custom cakes the shop started out with pastries and coffee. The beans come from a roaster in Chicago that her family owns called Hexe Coffee Company. 

“It’s just wonderful stuff and everyone seems to love it here too,” she says.

Since opening, Valhalla Cakes has extended its hours into the evening on Fridays and Saturdays and is offering beer and wine and slices of fresh baked focaccia pizza. It’s also offering breakfast sandwiches in the mornings. Slade’s fiancé is the store manager and barista and soon plans to be the sandwich maker. 

“His dream is to have a deli,” she says. “He loves making sandwiches so the long-term plan for us is to incorporate sandwiches into our bakery.” 

Valhalla Cakes is also adding a back deck that will overlook part of downtown Tryon and the future Saluda Grade Trail. Slade is hoping to have it completed by next spring. It will expand the local gathering space that the shop has become. 

“We just have a really nice group of regulars and this is their place to come and hang and meet everybody,” she says. “It’s awesome. It’s exactly how I hoped opening something in a smaller town would be.”