Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sweet success
Margate baker’s business has all the right ingredients.
A Fort Lauderdale woman may be on the verge of becoming the next foodie star, with an upcoming appearance on a televised baking contest and the opening of her own bakery in Margate.
Lykeisha Jenrette, who has made a name for herself locally as “Lykeisha the Baker,” will make her television debut in the bake-off “Sweet Freak Dessert Competition,” which will air at noon April 25, as part of the Travel Channel’s “Best in Food” series.
“In the beginning, I was very nervous,” Jenrette says of taping the baking contest in November during the Miami Gardens Wine and Food Experience. “We went on the stage. We were in front of so many people, so many lights. We had so many cameras. And I have someone asking me questions, but I’m trying to focus. It’s like you’re trying to multitask to something you really, really have to focus on. So it was a lot.”
That was then. This is now, and Jenrette is still dealing with a lot. The Miami-born mother of four is opening the Sweet Spot, a brick-and-mortar bakery,
shop and school in Margate, this month.
“I originally had another bakery, which was located off of Sixth Street [in Fort Lauderdale],” Jenrette, 36, says. “However, the name was different. It was based off of my name, Lykeisha the Baker bakery, and I decided to branch out. It was very small. It was a very good startup business, probably 400 square feet. That was about three years ago — 2014 to be exact. I had that business for a little over three years.
“I decided to revamp the name,” she continues. “I wanted something that was more on the commercial side, because I’m also looking into the long run. I’m thinking of franchising and things like that. So I came up with the name the Sweet Spot. It’ll pretty much be your onestop shop for pretty much everything sweet. So we’ll be focusing on desserts. We’ll also be focusing on classes. We’ll be focusing on cake supplies … everything sweet under one roof.”
Jenrette closed the bakery in Fort Lauderdale three months ago. Since then, she’s been filling orders via her business telephone number. Her new location on State Road 7, just north of Atlantic Boulevard in the quiet Chevy Chase Shopping Center behind the Walmart Supercenter, is much bigger than the previous shop off Sistrunk Avenue. The 1,900-square-foot space will include a shop in the front with a special-events room/classroom to the right. In the back is Jenrette’s spacious office (so her kids have somewhere to play and do homework) and a kitchen.
Looking back, Jenrette says she has always loved baking and is self-taught.
“I can remember me, as a child, I loved going into the kitchen with my mom and baking and just, you know, dipping my hands in anything I could,” she recalls. “I had the love of baking at a very early age because of that. And she always allowed me to go and do different things and explore in the kitchen, and my kids are the exact same way.”
And she has been bitten by the TV bug, an experience she found nerve-wracking but exhilarating during the “Sweet Freak Dessert Competition” taping.
“We pretty much had 20 minutes to put our dish together,” Jenrette says. “So once they said, ‘Go,’ I mean, I was like in a zone. I really did not notice that we were being filmed or that I was on a stage until after they called time. And believe it or not, I was the last one to finish my dessert.”
At the end of the allotted time, disaster struck. A decorative pie crust “sail” that Jenrette had made to top off her dessert broke. Thankfully, she had made another one.
“It was like 10 seconds left, and Michelle Bernstein [one of the contest’s judges], she was saying, ‘Just throw it on the plate! Do anything!’ You could see that my hands were literally shaking and I got it at the last minute,” Jenrette says. “So it all worked out.”
Doing more TV is definitely in her plans, she says.
“I am looking to explore more on television, perhaps doing some more competitions, baking competitions,” Jenrette says. “I also want to perhaps do my own TV show. My personal goal is to every year to open a new location for each one of my children. Eventually, I want to be all over. I want to franchise it out. You’ll be able to do parties. You’ll be able to buy cake supplies. You’ll be able to buy desserts.”
Jenrette says she thinks her baking strength comes from her growing up in South Florida, with its multicultural community. As Lykeisha the Baker, she became a bit of a social media star on Facebook and Instagram with unusual dessert-flavor profiles.
“I grew up in Miami, and it’s so diverse,” she says. “You can go down the street, and you’re in what’s called Little Havana. And then you can go around the corner, and you’re in what’s called Little Haiti. So it’s so many different cultures, so many different cuisines that I’ve also been exposed to. And it’s allowed me to kind of travel without traveling. I’ve been … able to grow my flavor profiles by just being in South Florida because of the diversity of cultures.”
Some of Lykeisha the Baker’s most popular treats included cakes that tasted like strawberry-shortcake ice cream bars, a cayenne pepper chocolate cake and her after-5 cupcakes, which were infused with strawberry margarita, Kahlua, Moscato and other alcoholic drinks.
“As far as the flavor profiles,” Jenrette says, “I have a very creative mind. I’ve always been that way. My palate is very diverse. I’m always open to try new things. Sometimes I take things, you know, I might have had from one cuisine and mix it over, do a mash-up. If I’m eating something, I can say, ‘OK, oh, I like that. Let’s see how I can transfer that over into a dessert.’ And I’m always looking to do something that’s more traditional, but put my spin on it. I was very, very popular for a banana pudding cake. At that time, no one had heard of it. I did the peach-cobbler cheesecake. I did the chicken-and-waffle cupcake.”
Back then, her younger sister Patrice was her assistant. Jenrette is hoping that Patrice can find time to help out at the Sweet Spot.
“She knows me very well,” Jenrette says. “She knows that when I’m baking I can, you know, sometimes be a bake-zilla.”
For more information on the Sweet Spot, call 954-226-1000 or go to TheSweetSpotMargate.com.