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If you’re an accomplished pastry chef like Jennifer Ballintyn, you can handle intricate and fun cake-design requests (Minions, anyone?), along with an order from a supermarket chain for, say, 120-200 dozen doughnuts daily. Ballintyn and her 12 employees at Jes-Made Bakery work out of a tiny building next to the Lenni Post Office, turning out a variety of sought-after confections.
She and her architect husband, Mark—who live in Newark, Del.—bought the 18-year-old Jes-Made last year. Here, you’ll find all manner of sugar-and-flour masterpieces, including portrait and wedding cakes, Italian rum cakes, strawberry shortcakes, cheesecakes, breads, cinnamon buns, cookies, and pies. That’s in addition to the hundreds of doughnuts that are trucked to six ShopRites in New Castle County, Del., each day.
Jennifer has been baking since she was a teenager, working at a Delaware bakery during the summers. She graduated from Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C., in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in food-service management and spent six years at the acclaimed Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, first as a cake decorator and then as a pastry chef.
Jennifer says Jes-Made’s most popular doughnut is a powdered, white-cream-filled one, but the “doughnut of the month” is always a hit. In December, the bakery is offering a decadent hot-chocolate variation, filled with chocolate cream and finished off with chocolate frosting and marshmallows.
415 Lenni Road, Lenni, (610) 558-2131, www.jesmadebakery.com.
