By Susan E. Campbell
When a Miss Cocca with a talent for baking married a Mr. Dott of Albany, the outcome was sweet bliss in more ways than one.
Six years ago, at her husband’s suggestion, Rachel Dott launched Coccadotts Cake Shop on Central Avenue, next door to Dotts Garage, the automobile repair shop his family has run for 100 years.
Now Coccadotts Cake Shop is a family business that custom bakes cakes, tiered cakes, pastries, and cupcakes in three sizes that are shipped all over the country. Husband Luke Dott is with Coccadotts full time now. A store in Myrtle Beach, where her father, mother and step-mother work, opened for business last year.
The new Coccadotts Express Shop is in Clifton Park at Clifton Park Center. It is the first of three that the Dotts will introduce within the next 18 months.
The Express shops are for picking up some goodies on the way home or after shopping at the mall. Baking is not done at the premises, but in Albany at a brand new warehouse. The cakes are trucked to Central Avenue, Clifton Park, and soon to a new, yet undisclosed, express location in Albany County, with another to follow by the end of 2014.
“I felt Clifton Park needed a little cupcake shop, and there are plenty of people (with a sweet tooth) at Clifton Park Center,” Dott said.
On any given day the stores display 38 flavors of cupcakes to choose from, Dott said, each one of her own design.
“I take design very seriously,” she said. “After six years I see the flow of what sells, but I stay on top of the curve of trends and flavors. My focus is to keep everything fresh and new.”
Cake flavors range from classic white, chocolate and marble, to root beer and grape. In fact, anything Dott can conceive of can be captured in cake.
For Super-Bowl Sunday parties she made corn muffins with hot sauce and bleu cheese on top and a chicken wing on top. But she gives her personal touch to even the timeless dark chocolate-covered strawberry on butter cream frosting over the cake flavor of choice.
Muffins are the largest of the Coccadotts cupcakes, followed by the traditional eight-and-a-half ounce cupcake. The smallest is the cuppycake, three and a half ounces each and packaged in dozens.
Coccadotts customers still travel to the flagship store in Albany when custom-ordering wedding cakes or pasties for special events.
“Everything is working very well for us. We are very busy and growing,” said Dott.
More information and on-line ordering is available at www.coccadotts.com.