Mystical and Magical: Pastry Chef Jennifer Rineer
Jennifer Rineer was 5 when she received an Easy- Bake oven. “I loved to make brownies and cookies because they were quick, and I could eat them right away,” recalls Rineer, who grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where cooking and baking were Southern rituals.
Her passion for art also started at an early age. She majored in the subject at East Carolina University and then the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. College and Rineer, however, didn’t click. She’d been working in restaurants since she was 18, and she left school to pursue a career with Lone Star Steakhouse. As the company’s corporate trainer, Rineer opened 31 restaurants, including one in Delaware. “I ended up liking it,” says Rineer, who made Delaware her home base.
By age 28, Rineer, who’d also worked for Einstein Bagels, needed a change. She earned a degree in agriculture from the University of Delaware. She also met and married Joe Rineer, a science teacher, who worked at Cape Henlopen High School.
At home with young children, Rineer caught one of the many cake-centric shows on the Food Network. With her artistic background, she thought, she could give cake-making a go. Baby and wedding shower guests enjoyed her early efforts. When she and her husband moved to North Carolina to be near her parents, she started charging for her cakes.
The family’s stay in the South only lasted three years. “We missed the Delaware beaches and our friends so much,” she says. “We came back, and I will never move.” It was 2012, and during their brief absence, the Delaware coast had become more of a mecca for fine dining and destination weddings. It was the perfect time to open Carolina Sugar Fairy, which operates out of a friend’s commercial restaurant kitchen.
Among brides, Rineer has become famous for her flavors. She offers up to 25 different kinds of cake, including blueberry- lemon, hot apple cider, key lime and peach cobbler. “I plumped up real nice trying to figure out new ones,” she says.
As part of her custom service, Rineer will make a cake out of most any subject. Consider cupcakes topped by tiny tomes of Elin Hilderbrand’s A Perfect Couple, which she crafted for a book club fete, or a miniature Fort Miles fire watch tower on a wedding cake. Her agricultural degree is an asset when it comes to sculpting sugar flowers, which is a specialty.
“Sometimes I feel like an architect,” she acknowledges. “I tell my clients that if they can dream it, I can design it and bake it.”
On most Sundays in summer, you’ll find her on a boat, even though she’s in the thick of the coastal wedding season. “Sundays,” she says, “mean family time.”
Trends and tips: Today’s brides often order a small wedding cake, which they augment with a dessert bar that might include macarons, cake pop and cookie pops. “Everybody still wants the pretty, but they want more choices,” she says. Edible guest favors are also a hit.
Carolina Sugar Fairy 302.858.7084
