The Bakery Lady

The Bakery Lady operates out of a small storefront on Highway 20 East in Freeport, where owner Tabitha Inabent bakes cakes, cookies, and pies to order for weddings, birthdays, and every other occasion that calls for something sweet. Everything on the menu is made after a customer places an order rather than pulled from a display case, so a visit here usually starts with a conversation about flavors and design rather than a walk-up purchase.

Inabent’s signature item is the stuffed cookie, a thick, hand-formed cookie built around a hidden filling that reveals itself with the first bite. The lineup runs through banana pudding, white chocolate raspberry, strawberry cheesecake, cherry chocolate chip, a Reese’s version, a s’mores version, and strawberry shortcake, along with a Cookie Monster cookie and a chocolate chip cookie stuffed with Nutella, all sold by the half dozen. Seasonal versions rotate through the year, including a pumpkin spice cookie in the fall and a mint chocolate chip cookie around the holidays.

Beyond the stuffed cookies, the shop turns out custom sugar cookies decorated for nearly any occasion, from Easter and Halloween to baby announcements, birthdays, and local sports teams, along with edible-image treats printed to order. The cake menu covers standard flavors like confetti birthday cake, strawberry shortcake, triple chocolate mousse, a Biscoff cake, and German chocolate, all built in sizes that scale with the size of the celebration, plus fully custom birthday cakes designed around a customer’s request. Pie flavors include cherry, apple, pumpkin, chocolate silk, caramel, and pecan, and the shop also bakes gluten-free versions of its chocolate chip, peanut butter, and red velvet cookies for customers avoiding gluten.

What sets The Bakery Lady apart from a grocery-store bakery counter is the level of customization on every order. Reviewers describe the cookies as buttery, soft, and moist, and repeat customers mention that Inabent is consistently reliable across cookies, cakes, and pies alike, which matters for anyone ordering ahead of a wedding or birthday where there is no room for a bad batch. Because everything is made to order, placing a request a few days ahead of a celebration, rather than the morning of, gives the shop time to plan ingredients and decoration around a specific design.

The shop keeps morning-focused hours, opening early on weekdays and running a shorter shift on Saturdays, with Sundays reserved as a day off. That schedule suits the shop’s role as a stop for picking up a pre-ordered cake or box of cookies rather than a bakery cafe meant for lingering. Highway 20 East runs through the middle of Freeport and connects easily to the rest of town, making a stop here simple to fold into a morning errand run or a drive toward the beaches along the Gulf.

Freeport sits inland from the beach towns of South Walton, which makes it a practical stop for visitors staying along 30A or in Destin who want a custom cake or a box of stuffed cookies without paying resort-town prices or waiting in a beach-season line. Because The Bakery Lady bakes only what has been ordered, travelers passing through on a shorter trip should call or message ahead rather than expect walk-in stock, but anyone planning a longer stay in the area can build a pickup into their schedule with a few days’ notice. The same owner also runs a separate charcuterie board business under a related name, a sign of how much local demand there is for made-to-order food built around a single home kitchen’s output.