OUTSTANDING BAKER OR DESSERT PROFESSIONAL: Jenn Batt

Jenn Batt, Quokka Sweets

Jenn Batt focuses her veteran pastry skill on premium ice cream, custom cakes, macarons, gâteaux basques, cream puffs, financiers and anything else from the classic patisserie catalog. She makes everything from scratch and by hand, including her ice cream, tart doughs and fillings. Her use of local seasonal fruit is extraordinary, and her uncompromising standards keep her busy during fruit-forward seasons. This is when she taps her farmer relationships to buy in bulk, process and store her wintertime arsenal: 15 types of fruit preserves she can use to make customer requests Quokka-worthy.

Even in the dead of winter, Batt can meet a request for a strawberry wedding cake, thanks to her own preserves. Batt draws on a diverse, nontraditional range of influences, offering ice creams inspired by personal flights of fancy, such as spruce tip stracciatella flecked with dark chocolate, and coconut sticky rice with local rhubarb, a Southeast Asian dessert reimagined with Buffalo-area produce, alongside more traditional motifs like red velvet with cream cheese. Fans can custom-order products from her directly or stop into the Farm Shop, Buffalo’s boutique trading post where she sells her ice creams and baked goods. Batt, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, supports other small businesses with half a dozen pop-ups annually and volunteers for nonprofit fundraisers held for worthy organizations like the Massachusetts Avenue Project. Learn more at Quokka’s website.