How Tini Younger perfected her viral mac n cheese and found a culinary career

Tineke “Tini” Younger is someone my grandmother would call a spitfire. She knows what she wants, yes, but she also has the confidence to fully turn away from what disinterests her. She’s hardworking. She’s curious. And, as she sits across from me on camera from her house in Augusta, Georgia, she’s craving something sweet — a consequence of her pregnancy.

“I noticed I want to eat more sweet stuff than savory. I just sat down and ate half a birthday sheet cake in one sitting,” she told Mashable before joking that her real pregnancy craving is painkillers.

The 24-year-old chef and content creator is wearing an off-the-shoulder gray top, her hair pulled back, and a heart necklace — a birthday gift from her husband. It matches a ring she can’t currently wear due to her hands swelling from being pregnant with twins, but you might be more familiar with her standing in her kitchen, clad in an apron. She started posting videos on TikTok of herself cooking for her then-boyfriend in 2021. The boyfriend is now her husband, and in the five years since the series began, she’s appeared on the second season of Next Level Chef, hosted a YouTube show on Gordon Ramsay’s Bite Originals channel, and published her cookbook, aptly titled Cooking for my Boyfriend.

The mac ‘n cheese that divided the internet

Her viral breakthrough, however, came in the form of a polarizing three-minute TikTok in which she shared her mac ‘n cheese recipe. The video, which she continuously updates, has amassed over 101 million views and 9.6 million likes and led to coverage in Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, the Today Show, and more.

In the video, she uses Cavatappi pasta, a spiral-shaped pasta that catches the cheese in its curves — a choice that led to a nearly 50 percent spike in Cavatappi sales in comparison to the year before Younger’s video, according to Nielsen data reported by Forbes. The comments on the TikTok are overwhelmingly positive: “In Tini we trust 🫡” and “Girl yessss!! 🤌🏼🔥🫶🏼.”

“That recipe took me four years to perfect,” Younger said. “If you go on my TikTok, and if you go all the way down to like 2021 and 2022, I’m making different variations of that mac ‘n cheese. I’m experimenting and [asking my then-boyfriend] Antoine, ‘Is this the best mac ‘n cheese you’ve ever had?’ And he’s like, ‘not yet.'”

She worked on the recipe until she got “Antoine’s approval” as the best mac ‘n cheese he’d ever had — creamy, cheesy, not too powerful, not too seasoned. She said having Antoine as her taste-tester is key. “I can’t get better if I don’t get honest feedback.”

But the viral mac ‘n cheese wasn’t without its controversy. Some users called the recipe overhyped, and others said Tini — a white woman — was appropriating Black American culture with the dish.

To be clear, macaroni and cheese has deep roots in Black American cuisine. James Hemings, a formerly enslaved man who became America’s first French-trained chef, is largely credited with introducing mac ‘n cheese to the U.S. in the late 18th century, according to The Guardian. However, it’s difficult to pin down. Monticello, where Hemings cooked as an enslaved person, argues that “pasta specifically baked with cheese had already become a popular dish in France” before Hemings penned the recipe on Monticello’s menu. He reportedly made the dish with a roux, The Guardian reported, which is the same technique Younger uses today.

Ultimately, Younger says she isn’t taking credit for creating mac ‘n cheese — she’s just sharing her version of it. Even now, her instinct is to say, “Either make the mac ‘n cheese or don’t.”

Though the one thing that did upset her was people saying the only reason she uses spices in her cooking is because of Antoine, who is Black.

“When I first started TikTok [in 2021], people were giving [Antoine] all the credit for the cooking,” she said, “They were like, ‘He taught her how to cook.’ I’m like, ‘No, this man wasn’t even using salt and pepper on his chicken before he met me.’ He’ll tell you that. So I just kind of had to prove myself to people.”

When culinary school changed everything

Proving herself was nothing new for Younger. She grew up in Maryland with a mom who baked occasionally, a dad who liked to “cook” — she used air quotes for that — and a grandmother who rarely stepped foot in the kitchen. Her siblings weren’t particularly interested in cooking, and neither parent was particularly skilled in it. She didn’t take an interest in cooking until it was a way to get out of class.

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Younger said she struggled in school due to a learning disability, and as a result, became what she calls “disruptive.” In middle school, she hid behind the gym to avoid class. In high school, she set off stink bombs — sometimes to cheat on a test, sometimes just to watch people react to the scent of sulfur in the narrow hallways.

Then, in her junior year, everything shifted. Through a program at her public high school, she enrolled in a local trade center for teens. One of the options: culinary school. She signed up mostly to avoid academics and ended up discovering her passion.

“[My learning disability] took me a little bit to figure out. You’re not dumb — it’s just a different way of learning. I can soak up information, just when it comes to food,” she said.

There was one problem: Her GPA wasn’t high enough. The culinary program required a 2.0, and Younger didn’t have it. But the chef in charge of admissions called her anyway and encouraged her to apply.

Although she started the program “just to get out of class,” she discovered almost immediately that it was something she enjoyed and wanted to get better at. “Everything flipped,” she said. She went from earning D and C grades to earning As and Bs. She stopped picking fights with people. She felt freedom and excitement, and she “loved every second of it.”

Cooking for the cameras

Fast-forward a few years, Younger was preparing to enter a Disney culinary program when another opportunity came up: Next Level Chef, the Gordon Ramsay reality competition show. Two weeks before she was due to leave, she was offered a spot on the show. She made a deal with herself: If she placed in the top 10, she’d keep pursuing food content full-time because she thought she could make a consistent paycheck from it. If not, she’d go to Disney. She finished eighth.

Once again, Younger’s life changed. She got an agent. She met some of her best friends. She had a YouTube show on Gordon Ramsay’s Bite Originals channel. And she learned something important. “Every time someone talks about [Gordon Ramsay], I’m like, ‘Well, first, he smells really good,'” she said. (For the record: it’s Creed cologne.)

Now, she’s prepping for another Thanksgiving season — this time, with two babies on the way. She doesn’t have any major pregnancy cravings yet, and while she hasn’t picked out specific recipes for her future kids, she’s got one request: “They better not be picky eaters. There’s no way. They’re going to be eating Wagyu ground beef.”

In just a decade, Younger has gone from stink bomb connoisseur to mac ‘n cheese aficionado. She’s met her idols, published a cookbook, married her boyfriend and favorite food tester, became a better and more well-trained chef, and found success doing what she loves — all while proving to the world, and to herself, that she knows exactly what she’s doing.

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