VALENS (Mar 19, 2004)

Monday will be a sweet day at Dee's General Store when owner-baker Dee-Dee Picott expects to sell her 500,000th butter tart.

Picott keeps a tart tally on a sign outside her store on Regional Road 97 east of Cambridge and is dazzled by the prospect of notching it up to the half-million mark.

Picott started selling butter tarts in January 1997, when she made 48 a day. Now she bakes at least 1,440 a week. Business took off after her tarts won Record columnist Bill Bean's best butter tart contest in September 1998. Before that, she had sold 63,000 in her first 20 months. In the 66 months post-contest, she has sold the other 437,000.

As word spread, Picott started hearing from out-of-town customers and says she now ships baked goods all over North America.

Comedian Martin Short is a customer; Picott sends 24 at a time by courier to him at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. And yesterday, for example, she sent 48 to an ex-Canadian living in Baltimore and another 24 to Winter Park, Fla.

Among the celebrants at Dee's on Monday will be Angie Burtch and Adam Ross of Cambridge, who got engaged at the store in March 2002. They frequently drove past while they were dating, and Adam had jokingly said he would propose when the sign outside hit 500,000. Three years went by and, tired of waiting, Adam connived with Picott to change the sign from 313,496 to 499,999 just for a day. He and Angie dropped into the store, Adam popped the question and Picott was waiting with a tart, a rose and an engagement ring.