Episode 10

Yellow Cake, Biscuits, and the Legacy of Black Baking

In the final episode of Setting The Table, Deb Freeman speaks with:

  • Cheryl Day, owner of Back In The Day bakery and author of Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking

  • Carla Hall, chef and TV personality 


Episode highlights

  • Cheryl shares how she develops her recipes from old recipe cards and oral accounts as well as utilizing community and church cookbooks to celebrate Black Southern baking

  • Church cookbooks are a great insight in learning how a community communicates through food. (Pro tip from Deb: Check out your local antique shop’s book section and you may find one!)

  • Southern cooking and baking are synonymous: Sweets and baked goods are integral to meals in the Black community

  • Black bakers still face systemic barriers that prevent them from being included in the conversation of baking, as well as undervaluing the work they produce

  • Carla Hall shares how after culinary school she began reverse engineering the recipes of the food her grandmother would make. 

  • Do you know what a good biscuit tastes like? A question Carla explored with many New Yorkers after creating a biscuit recipe that is reminiscent of her grandmother’s.

  • Black bakers and ingenuity: Carla explains how Black people adapt to kitchen environments and experiment with different ingredients and how visual cues are extremely important in baking. 

  • Stickies, a lesser known baked good similar to cinnamon rolls, are an example of Black baking that can be lost if not embraced, but there’s a rise in bakers exploring their roots.

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Episode 9: Black Women in Activism and Food