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Business
A Key Lime Sensation
Fred and Sally Humphries run Fred’s Olde Tyme Cakes, Pies & Fudge in Milford, specializing in 20 different flavors of pie, including Fred’s world-famous key lime.Up until about 20 years ago, Fred Humphries will tell you, he couldn’t boil water, nor had he likely ever turned on a stove.
There have been a lot of pies under the bridge since then.
Twenty years ago, the former lumber and construction man was teaching a construction course that left him at 2:15 p.m. with too much time on his hands. Rummaging around through stuff he meant to toss, he came across his great-great-grandmother’s recipe for poppy seed cake. Miraculously, he made it and gave it away to rave reviews.
Made bold by his success, he went to Don and Jean Ackerman – total strangers – at Lehr’s Meats & Deli in Milford, dropped off a couple of cakes and asked if he could bake in their store.
“I used to sell two cakes a week and I thought I was the biggest bakery in town,” he says. “I got more of a kick out of that than a $250,000 construction job.”
He branched out into fudge. He fiddled around with key lime pie recipes until he hit on one that customers said was the best they’d ever eaten.
Fred’s Olde Tyme Cakes, Pies & Fudge was born.
Now Humphries and his wife, Sally, ship key lime pies to New York, Chicago, Key West and across the country. Although he continues to use the kitchen at the accomodating Lehr’s, he now sells to other meat markets, as well as restaurants. His pie repertoire has expanded to more than 20 varieties, and he keeps 150-175 frozen pies on hand.
He laughs when he thinks about a man who had never cooked being given the opportunity to bake for a living.
“You can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it,” he says. “The key lime pie was just a winner.”
Story by Catherine Darnell
Photo by Michael W. Bunch
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