Pastry Chef Supplies ShopRite with Specialty Doughnuts

If you’re an accomplished pastry chef like Jennifer Ballintyn, you can handle intricate cake-design requests as well as an order from a supermarket chain in Delaware—ShopRite, for instance—for 120 to 200 dozen doughnuts daily. Ballintyn and her 12 employees at Jes Made Bakery work out of a tiny building in Lenni, Pa., turning out sought-after confections. They also make portrait and wedding cakes, Italian rum cakes, strawberry shortcakes, cheesecakes and a variety of pastries and pies. Residents of Newark, Ballintyn and her architect husband, Mark, purchased the 18-year-old Jes Made last year. A graduate of Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C., she spent the past six years at the Hotel du Pont, first as a cake decorator and then as a pastry chef. She introduced a “doughnut of the month,” a popular feature at Jes Made. On tap for November: a seasonally appropriate cranberry-orange one as well as a pumpkin spice cream that is available throughout the fall.