Chef Tini Younger: TikTok’s 2026 TIME100 Creator
Credit: @tinekeyounger/TikTok
Chef Tini built her name on one dish: a cavatappi mac and cheese so widely copied that grocery stores ran short of the pasta shape. Now TIME has put her on its 2026 list of the most influential digital creators, alongside a second cookbook landing in November. Here’s how a Maryland culinary-school grad turned one Thanksgiving side dish into a career TIME is calling out by name.
What to Know
- Tineke “Tini” Younger, known online as Chef Tini, was named to TIME’s 2026 TIME100 Creators list, published July 2026.
- Her 2024 update to her signature cavatappi mac and cheese tutorial has drawn more than 100 million views on TikTok, according to TODAY.
- She placed 8th on Season 2 of Gordon Ramsay’s “Next Level Chef” in 2023, months before the mac and cheese video ever existed.
- Her second cookbook, “Today We Are Cooking…: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef,” releases November 3, 2026 from Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House.
- Her TikTok handle is @tinekeyounger, with more than 12 million followers.
In this article
Who Is Chef Tini Younger
Chef Tini Younger grew up in Walkersville, Maryland, where she learned to cook through her high school’s culinary program and later Frederick Community College. She launched her TikTok account in 2020, years before most of the internet knew her name.
Her first real national exposure came in 2023, when she competed on Season 2 of Fox’s “Next Level Chef,” Gordon Ramsay’s cooking competition. Chef Tini finished 8th. She later returned as a guest on Season 3 and hosted a YouTube cooking show, “From Scratch with Tini,” on Ramsay’s Bite Originals channel. None of that is what made her famous. A pasta bake did.
Her personal life has played out alongside her cooking career, not separately from it. Chef Tini met her now-husband, Antoine Wright Jr., in 2019, got engaged in November 2023 and married him in Jamaica on November 12, 2024, right as the mac and cheese video was turning her into one of TikTok’s most-watched food creators. Wright has become a recurring character in her videos since, usually as the person taste-testing whatever she’s cooking. She’s since settled in Georgia, where TIME’s 2026 profile identifies her as based today.
The Mac and Cheese Video That Broke the Internet
Chef Tini posted an early version of her mac and cheese tutorial in late 2023: cavatappi instead of elbow noodles, 2.5 pounds of hand-shredded mozzarella, Colby Jack and sharp cheddar, a stovetop roux built with butter, heavy cream and a can of Carnation evaporated milk, finished with Dijon mustard and smoked paprika. It got attention. An updated version she posted in 2024 did more than that.
By late 2024, that follow-up tutorial had passed 100 million views on TikTok, according to TODAY’s own recipe coverage. Commenters reported cavatappi selling out at their local grocery stores, an actual, widely reported side effect of one recipe’s reach. The dish became a fixture of Thanksgiving TikTok two years running, and Chef Tini’s version of comfort food, built for people who don’t already know their way around a kitchen, became her actual brand.
@tinekeyounger Showing yall how to make Mac N cheese for this holiday season🫶🏼
♬ original sound – Tini👩🏼🍳🔥
She’s kept riffing on it since. TIME’s own 2026 profile asked her directly about the criticism the dish still draws over how rich it is. Her answer: “It’s a lot of cheese.” That’s the whole pitch, delivered without apology, and it’s a big part of why the recipe still gets remade every holiday season.
A TIME100 Creator for 2026
TIME named Chef Tini to its 2026 TIME100 Creators list, published in July 2026, a list built to track “the most influential digital voices” working right now, not a lifetime-achievement honor. Her own entry on TIME’s site puts her mission in her words: “I just want people to gain more confidence in the kitchen.”
The list sits alongside TIME’s better-known TIME100 franchise, but built specifically around creators rather than executives, politicians or entertainers with traditional media careers. Landing on it puts Chef Tini in a category TIME treats as a distinct, current measure of cultural reach, a recognition tied to what she’s doing on TikTok in 2026, not to her Next Level Chef run three years earlier.
TIME’s write-up frames Chef Tini’s appeal around accessibility rather than technique for its own sake: hot honey chicken tenders, deep-fried deviled eggs, roasted tomato soup, dishes built for a home cook without professional equipment or years of practice. Her husband, Antoine Wright Jr., appears in her videos regularly, most often as the designated chicken alfredo fan. Asked what she likes cooking most, she told TIME: “When people ask me, ‘What’s your favorite thing to cook?’ It’s things that I haven’t cooked before.”
A Second Cookbook, Built to Teach
Chef Tini’s first cookbook, “Cooking for My Boyfriend,” came out in 2023. Her second, “Today We Are Cooking…: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef,” publishes November 3, 2026 through Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Penguin Random House’s own listing describes more than 100 recipes meant to build “a strong foundation for beginner cooks,” each one paired with the reasoning behind the technique, not just the steps.
The book’s table of contents leans on the same instincts that made the mac and cheese video work: BBQ pulled pork, chicken soup with homemade noodles, creamy grits, game-day appetizers, and, per the publisher, her viral mac and cheese recipe itself, written out in full for the first time in a physical book. The title itself doubles as her stated goal for the whole project, teaching a reader to think through a dish rather than just follow one.
The dessert side of TikTok’s food economy has produced its own breakout hits this year too. This site’s own roundup of viral TikTok food trends led with a different Chef Tini video entirely: a Dubai chocolate strawberry cup that pulled in more than 11 million views on its own, evidence that the mac and cheese wasn’t a one-time fluke.
When the Internet Turned on the Recipe
Going viral repeatedly came with real backlash, not just praise, and Chef Tini’s own coverage doesn’t shy away from it. One recurring rumor claimed the mac and cheese recipe actually belonged to her mother-in-law, and that Chef Tini had taken credit for a family dish that wasn’t hers to sell. She rejected that directly in an Instagram Stories post: “But that recipe is MINE,” adding, “Antoine’s mom did not teach me how to make it, it’s not her recipe. I literally have a video teaching my in laws how to make MY recipe to Mac n cheese.”
@tinekeyounger Teaching my in laws how to make my Mac n cheese 🧀
♬ original sound – Tini👩🏼🍳🔥
A separate, more substantive debate ran alongside it: some Black TikTok users questioned why a white creator’s version of a dish long associated with Black family cooking was the one going viral and generating brand deals, while creators who’d made similar dishes for years without the same reach got comparatively little attention.
Chef Tini’s defenders countered that mac and cheese isn’t the property of any one household or community, and that the criticism said more about internet piling-on than about her specific video. Coverage of the debate, including from Spoon University and the Daily Dot, presented it as a genuine, unresolved disagreement rather than a scandal with a clear right answer, and this site isn’t taking a side on it either. It’s part of the real record of what going viral repeatedly has actually looked like for her.
Life Beyond the Kitchen
Chef Tini’s story isn’t only about a recipe. In June 2025, she and Wright announced they were expecting twin daughters. That November, close to her due date, she shared that one of the twins, whom they named Arya, had died after a placental abruption at nearly 36 weeks. “I had a placenta abruption and we lost our sweet girl,” she wrote at the time, adding that Arya’s surviving twin sister was “doing really good and breathing on her own.”
Chef Tini has spoken about the loss publicly and directly in the months since, including a February 2026 update in which she said she and her family “talk about Arya all the time” to her surviving daughter and keep a small memorial for her. She returned to posting recipe content afterward. When the mac and cheese ownership dispute resurfaced around the same period, she said the criticism felt trivial set against what her family had actually been through, and pushed back at people who brought her daughter’s death into an argument about pasta.
What’s Next for Chef Tini
“Today We Are Cooking…” publishes November 3, 2026, timed for a holiday cooking season Chef Tini has already claimed twice with a single pasta dish. TIME’s 2026 recognition puts her in the same conversation as the platform’s other most-watched voices, at a point in her career where a competition-show appearance, a viral recipe, a first cookbook and a second book with a real publisher behind it have all landed inside three years. Her own stated goal hasn’t changed across any of it: more confidence in home cooks’ kitchens, not more perfect technique for its own sake.
What makes Chef Tini’s 2026 different from a typical viral-recipe story is the staying power behind it. Plenty of TikTok food moments produce one breakout video and fade; hers produced a competition-show alumna turned two-time cookbook author with a TIME100 credit and a dish that still sells out a pasta shape at the grocery store every November. That combination, not any single video, is what the TIME100 list is actually rewarding.
Quick Answers
Who is Chef Tini Younger?
Chef Tini, whose real name is Tineke Younger, is a TikTok chef and cookbook author from Walkersville, Maryland, best known for a mac and cheese tutorial that topped 100 million views on TikTok.
What is Chef Tini’s TikTok handle?
@tinekeyounger, with more than 12 million followers as of 2026.
Was Chef Tini on Next Level Chef?
Yes. She competed on Season 2 in 2023 and finished 8th, then returned as a guest on Season 3.
When does Chef Tini’s new cookbook come out?
“Today We Are Cooking…: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef” releases November 3, 2026 from Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House.
Why was Chef Tini named to TIME100 Creators?
TIME included her on its 2026 TIME100 Creators list, which recognizes influential digital creators, citing her viral mac and cheese recipe and her focus on making home cooking approachable.
