Food is how we show love, nourish our bodies, and build community. A creator on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, @wickdconfections (Instagram), otherwise known as Sonja Norwood, is hard at work to make sure the recipes created and adapted by Black Americans are being saved. Preserving these pieces of history is so important. Not just because the food is delicious, but because erasure of non-white culture is typical of the U.S., especially in the modern day.
To celebrate the amazing food that Ms. Norwood has showcased, I’m back with another tier list, this time in order of what I want to make the most. Not all recipes will be listed here, but they’re all worth taking a look at.
5. Vinegar Pie
It’s the unfortunate truth that many Black Americans living in the South and Midwest when these recipes were made were living in poverty. Still, everyone should have access to dessert. In a pinch, apple cider vinegar could be used to make a pie that would taste like lemon pie without using any fresh fruit. The vinegar provides a nice tang to an otherwise sweet pie. Recipes for this can be found when researching the Great Depression, but it’s much older than that.
4. Butter Roll
It seems similar to a cinnamon roll, but it sounds quicker to make, and more caramelly. Coming from the Mississippi Delta, this became many people’s household staples for a cheap dessert. It spread through the South, with no standard recipe. Even with no written recipe, it was still something many Black Americans would eat and say it tasted just like their grandmother used to make.
3. Burnt Sugar Cake
Before chocolate cake and vanilla cake became American standards, burnt sugar cake thrived. Making a caramel cake and frosting, a burnt sugar cake was luxurious. Sugar was a staple in the South, where the very people forced to farm sugarcane also had to cook with it. Creativity thrived, though, allowing this gorgeous cake to come alive. It is very labor-intensive, allowing you to taste the love in each bite. Box cake mix is more convenient, and desserts like this that were time-consuming and easy to mess up slowly went away.
2. Cherry Brown Betty
I’ve never heard of a Betty before, and I’m sure many others haven’t, especially in the northern states. It was first written down in the 1800’s but is most likely much older. It used stale bread, being repurposed by enslaved people. Cherries were rare and expensive at the time, so it was mostly made for celebrations. With refrigeration and boxed cake mixes, brown betties started to disappear as fruit didn’t need to be cooked as quickly, and bread could stay fresh for longer. Convenience is trying to push this dessert out, but it stuck around this long for a reason.
1. Blackberry Dumplings
Berries were cheaper than sugar and able to be foraged. In the south, blackberries were abundant, so children could go pick bowls full, bringing them back to their mothers to have a delicious dessert. The dumpling portion helped stretch the dessert, being a cheap way to make it more filling, with a bonus of absorbing the juice to make it even better.
While all these recipes sound amazing, it is incredibly important to remember why these recipes were created in the first place. African people were forced into brutal enslavement by white Americans. These recipes came from what could be foraged, their rations, or what was leftover in the kitchen.
After emancipation, many Black Americans were forced into poverty, continuing this trend. Through endurance, creativity, and survival, these recipes were made and were passed orally, making it difficult for them to survive in the modern day.
There are still a few more days in February, so make sure to follow along with @wickdconfections to see more disappearing recipes of Black Americans and maybe try your hand at cooking a couple of these.