841: Carla Hall Doesn’t Need a Holiday to Bake Something Special 

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0:52but there's so many things in the book that i don't want you to wait for a holiday to do i don't want you to wait for christmas to make gingerbread cookies so i sort of blur the lines when you will make the thing which is why i made my gingerbread people black with braids Because I could. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Everybody loves Carla Hall. Carla Hall is a chef and TV host who has appeared on many of our favorite food programs over the years, from Bravo's Top Chef to Fox's Next Level Baker. Her latest cookbook is also her first baking book, Carla Bakes, Sweet, Savory, and From the Heart.

1:38Today on the show, Carla stops by the studio to chat about all things baking and what makes this book so special. Carla Hall, this is Tase. Thank you for coming on the podcast. It's so great to be back. Yeah, thank you for coming back again onto the podcast and to talk about baking, which is such a fun topic. And to start, I have to ask if you've had any good baked goods recently. I had well oh my gosh so at my book signing last night a woman and I it's in that bag she brought me some cinnamon rolls from my recipe on chewed up and she had milled her own flour wow and they're delicious and I was and it's funny I was eating something I was so hungry this morning and I was thinking wow this milled flour it's just a little sturdier you know and it's really nice and nutty And I just want to give her a shout out.

2:33I'll get the name in a minute. But people bring me things all the time. So that is the latest and greatest thing that I had. Is the cinnamon rolls. Do you feel like when people bring you the baked goods, do you try to eat them in front of them? Or do they want feedback? Or it's for later? Sometimes they do. Yeah. Sometimes they want feedback. And I say, do you want me to be honest? Do you want constructive feedback? And if they say yes, I'm like, OK, you said that you wanted feedback and I will eat it and I will give them feedback as if I'm on a show. That must be the thrill of a lifetime, though, to be critiqued by a Carla Hall live and in person.

3:10Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people people are up for it. And I think people are up to learning. They don't necessarily want me to praise it. I mean, I will do a positive sandwich. I will never trash anybody's thing. But I think the fact that they want constructive feedback, I feel like, hey, I'd love to give it to you. Right. I think that's the right way to approach it. And milling your own flour, I would never even consider doing that. Is that something that you've done? Okay. I was thinking about this when I was eating a cinnamon roll. I want one of those. The tabletop. The tabletop flour miller. And I have threatened to get it several times and I haven't gotten it.

3:47And then I just reminded myself that I do want one. I do. I mean, especially where our food is today. And I was also checking to see how my body feels. I think my body processes that flour very differently than the processed flour. So, yes, I'm back on the flour mill. Well, I think now that we've talked about it, we're speaking it into existence. Maybe you'll come home and there will be one waiting for you. Hello, Matthew. Hello. Do you know where to get that thing? Do you have room for it in your kitchen, I guess, is the real question. I just cleaned out some space. I can throw out some other stuff.

4:26You knew something was going to come in that you needed room for. I'm in that season. I'm getting things ready for buy nothing. I'm getting rid of things so I can pull in some other equipment. Well, we're already talking about baking a little bit, but this is your first baking cookbook, which I think is so special. And I'm wondering if you could tell me about why you wanted to make a baking cookbook, why this was the right time for it. I've wanted to do a baking book for a while, even before Soul Food. Soul Food came out in 2018. So I started working on it in 2016. So that's how long I've wanted to do a baking book.

5:00I think this is the right time because I now have a lot of the baking shows under my belt. I have Chasing Flavor under my belt. I've done The Cookie Company. So I have all of these things that I have done and I'm 62 and I have the bucket of efforts. So my projects now are absolutely things that I want to do. And I know how to share that. What shall I say? Tell people this is what I want to do. It's a good time for it. Yeah, it's a really good time for it. And I was having a lot of fun with this because I didn't have to do a book, but I felt like the book was in me. Do you know what I mean? I think reading the book, it makes so much sense.

5:49Like not only your background as a recipe developer, as a chef, as a caterer with the cookie company. I learned about that used to be an accountant. I was like, oh, OK, like math brain, like weights and measures. Do you feel like that serves you well? 100%. That I also have Virgo in my chart. So very exacting. What's your chart? I am Taurus with a Gemini rising and a Virgo. Moon. Yeah. I feel safe having baking recipes from somebody with that chart. Thank you. As a nervous baker, the Virgo placement is what I need to see. I feel very sane. Also, I think for me, because I've taught a lot, I've taught at Sur La Table.

6:32I've taught at other recreational baking classes. and whenever I'm doing a recipe I'm hearing the students or the people who take the classes and I'm trying to put myself in the kitchen with you and then there's some recipes that I really wanted to teach myself to do and so and they took a couple tries and so I'm also sharing that you know and I think um wanting someone to have a great experience colors the way that I will teach you how to do it I like that how would you describe your kind of baking style um I would say um I don't want it to be precious but I want it to be pretty pretty not precious and when I say that I want it to look good I like straight edges but I also want to be able to throw it together.

7:28You know, I really want the thing to, there's some simple things. So every chapter, for instance, every chapter starts with a very simple recipe. And as you get to the last recipe, it's a little more involved. It's not necessarily difficult, but it has components. And so I think if you're somebody who just wants to look at the book and, hey, just want something quick, then you look at those first few recipes. And I think that if you want a weekend project, the weekend baking warrior, then you're going to do some of those recipes that are at the bottom of the list. And I wanted to give people a point of view of how to work through the book.

8:11Now, if you want to change things up a little bit, I want you to go to the last chapter, which I call like the jewelry. You can like, you know, change your jam, change your chocolate or whatever and make it your own. Something I enjoyed reading in the book was just how much you look for the point of view of the baker when you're judging baked goods. Do you feel like there are any recipes in the book that really showcase your point of view as a baker? I think... Probably all of them, but... All of them. Well, the very vanilla cupcakes are in there because I want you to have a go-to recipe if you want to make cupcakes and the frosting.

8:45The frosting is made with cold butter. and I had a food stylist do this recipe for a photo shoot that I had and she was like oh my god the cold butter in the frosting I'm like yeah right and I'm not saying that I came up with that years ago when I was looking for a frosting and I had a lot of failures in frosting I was like I just need a stabilized frosting and I found that using the cold butter made a huge difference and And so I'm like, I think people need to know this. More people need to know. About cold butter. About the cold butter. And I think that you can make that frosting any flavor you want.

9:24You can make it any color that you want, but it can be your go-to frosting. So I feel like that frosting and that cake is very simple, but it could also be anything that you want. You can flavor the cake any way you want. That is how I think about baked goods, baking. something that I can morph into a mood and that's me I mean I don't know how I'm gonna dress tomorrow because it's not here yet right yeah have a base the building blocks that you can kind of learn to expand with as a baker yeah I like the way that you could almost kind of graduate through the chapters as well right like you start with the easy cookies and then you can get into the more advanced ones.

10:06Do you think the chapters in the book also, or is it like that cookies are easier or harder to make than cakes or how are the kind of chapters relating to each other? I think, well, I thought about those categories because there are cookie people, there are cake people. You know, there are people who are going to love yeast. There are people who hate yeast because they burn their yeast all the time, right? You know, the water's too hot blah blah blah so that's how the categories came about but I think in terms of cookies I'm very hard on cookies I do not like cookie exchanges I think I've had this conversation probably with Matt I don't like cookie exchanges because I feel like people have been making cookies since they were kids and sometimes those techniques have not upgraded to them as an adult So when you go to a cookie exchange, you get a lot of bad cookies.

10:58You get cookies that are too thick. You get those cookies that are those kisses with the bottoms and they're so big and you can't open your mouth with that chocolate kiss on it. I mean, what is that? What is that? And so I feel like if you are a cookie person, you will appreciate this chapter. And one of the cookies that was the hardest for me was the peanut butter cookie. Why the peanut butter cookie? Because I tried to use natural peanut butter. See, exactly. When you said, oh, yeah, girl, no. Because you want it to be better than it is sometimes. Yeah. To me at least. The natural peanut butter separates.

11:38And so the texture is off. And it was through my recipe tester, Bonnie Benwick. I said, girl, I can't. I would work on the recipes, get them right, and then I would turn them over to a recipe tester. and I was like I have to give this one to you before it's ready she said what's the problem I said it's just not working the texture she said oh you know Dory Greenspan will say use the peanut butter spread the commercial peanut butter I'm like what that was a huge aha moment for me well if Dory's saying it also you know come on that's

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14:21Carla Hall:I use it constantly and you should too. Bring quality to your kitchen with Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash taste. Get free shipping on your orders and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash taste. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. So I have to ask you because my co-host Matt probably has talked to you about it on the show that he every year is trying to win the cookie competition here at Penguin Random House.

15:05Every year he's inching closer and closer. or he has not yet clenched the title. Is there a cookie recipe in the book that you think maybe could get him there? I think the Linzer cookie. And I'm saying the Linzer cookie because the spices in the cookie itself, it has that snap, so you get texture, but also you have a pop of jam and he can decide whatever amazing jam that he wants to do. I mean, he can go strawberry black pepper, right? He can do the strawberry thyme that's in there. He can turn it on its head and almost do a somehow get in peanut flour into that cookie. Okay, I'm changing my recipe as we speak, but y 'all bear with me.

15:45And do grape jam. So then now he has a peanut butter and jelly version of the Linzer cookie. What? Why did I do that? Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm going to figure that out. Got to amend it in the book. I think that that's a smart way also because I think sometimes the cookie competition, you want people to be able to recognize the cookies. So saying PB &J Lenser cookie, people kind of know what to expect. Well, that's it. And I think that's I create from that space. I want something familiar, something that you've already bought into emotionally from a time and place in your life. And now you are giving it back to someone in something that's somewhat unfamiliar, but you sort of familiar.

16:26But you're like, oh, wow, I love this thing. Yeah. I think a good example of that in the book is the chicken pot pie savory pop tart recipe. Girl. Yeah. Where did that idea come from? I made I love pop tarts. OK. I love pop tarts. I have had the idea of doing a vending machine at an airport where you hit a button and you have your food come in. It's dough and it gets baked and it drops down. It's not pizza, but it's pop tarts. I've been thinking about this for a long time. And one of the items in the vending machine is this chicken pot pie Pop-Tart. Because if I'm at an airport, and I spend a lot of time at airports, I would want my dessert and I would also want something savory.

17:13And imagine at the airport you get this hot chicken pot pie Pop-Tart with the curry crust and then the ground chicken and peas and the carrots and the filling. I'm getting mad that this doesn't exist yet. I know. Who do we have to talk to? I know. Who do we need to talk to to get this machine? JFK Airport. I know. Also, maybe the sweet potato pumpkin pie recipe. Come on. You know what? I love that you mentioned that because why say or when you can say and? So when I went to the Chew, I'm very Southern, very Southern at heart. On the Chew, I had Daphne Oz, Clinton Kelly, Michael Simon, and Mario Batali.

17:56And most of them are from this area. I mean, Michael is from the Midwest, Cleveland. But they all were like pumpkin pie eaters. I don't think I'd ever had a pumpkin pie. I don't think I went on the Chew. I don't think I'd ever had pumpkin pie. If you're from the South and you are black, I don't want to make assumptions. But I bet you, you did not grow up eating pumpkin pie. So it was this whole pumpkin pie thing. And, you know, you know, above the Mason-Dixon line, below the Mason-Dixon line. And so I said, why say Orwell? You can say and. I said, pumpkin has its, you know, advantages and, you know, flavor and earthiness and sweet potato has its texture and sweetness.

18:39And what happens if you mush them up? So that's how I came up with the Pope Pumpkin. And it has the kind of earthy pumpkin flavor, but the creamy, fudgy, sweet potato texture. Yes. What's up with the crust? The crust is a flaky crust. Perfect. It's a flaky crust. And can I just say that you should always blind bake your crust. I cannot think of a situation where you would not blind bake the crust unless it is like an empanada or something like that. Do you use pie weights or anything like that when you're blind baking? So I've used several things. Erin McDonald, who's an amazing baker, she has these silicone pie weights, like peas, which are great.

19:22I've used those in a pinch. I've used beans. I've used rice. I've used sugar. I've used, I don't think before Erin sent me those, I don't think I actually owned pie weights. I just, food. You know? Yeah. Yeah. But I think having something down to weigh it down is important. Yes. Yes. And just to bake it so you get the flavor in the brown. I believe I went to a restaurant recently. Such a great restaurant. I can't remember where it was, but, you know, that's menopausal. The meal was so delicious. And then I had the lemon tart and the custard. The lemon custard was delicious. The pie crust was so blonde and so doughy and so undercooked.

20:10It just made me mad. And that was the last taste that I had leaving that restaurant. And it was so close to being perfect. And it was a Pat's Sucre and it wasn't pre-cooked. So I feel like you had an undunte cookie dough with lemon custard on top. In that situation, will you give a nice piece of feedback when you're leaving the restaurant or is that too far? I did. I said I really my meal was so good and I really love the feeling of the pie. I wish that the crust was cooked a little more. What did they say? I was a waiter. He didn't make it. He was like, yes, ma 'am. I'll pass it along. Yeah. What's your stance with ice cream on your sweet potato pumpkin pie?

20:55Would you do that? I've never thought to do that ever. Do you? If it's like a pumpkin pie and it's kind of warm, then I'll put some vanilla ice cream. But I think it's because I don't like pumpkin pie that much. See? Oh, my gosh. You're trying to fix it. You're trying to fix it with ice cream. exactly but now i don't have to now you don't have to now you have the sweetness with the potato i'd love ice cream with a fruit pie yeah like an apple yes yes i'm curious thinking about the recipes in the book what recipe was the most difficult to kind of perfect um i would say i don't want to say difficult but i i just did it repeatedly um try to get it right it was the Southern Pican Baklava Crinkle.

21:38And that came from Wow by Regina. It was a TikTok video. And I would say, oh, I'm going to do one of these viral video things. And I love working with phyllo. And so I did the recipe as it was. And I think you crinkle the dough, you crinkle the phyllo, and then you pour this custard over it. But again, the dough isn't cooked. So I didn't like the texture. And so I said, okay, I would change it. I would, I would crinkle the dough and I crinkled it and I baked and I'm like, oh, oh, I, I really like the crunch of this dough. And then I said, well, let me add pecans to it. So I crinkled it with pecans.

22:20Um, and then I said, this reminds me of pecan pie. This could be really good. And then I did the custard for the pecan. So So every time I did it, I had an aha moment and it informed the next step. But I didn't know going in what I was going to make. I was changing the recipe based on what I wanted it to feel like an experience as I ate it. And I needed crunch and texture. Yeah. Oh, I love hearing about the iterative process in that kind of way. I think sometimes you read a book and you just imagine that all of these recipes, like the ideas came fully formed for somebody. But actually, it's the process of tasting that kind of gets you there.

23:00Yes. And then also layering flavor. Then I was thinking, OK, maybe I can do the butter and then put seasoning in the flavor of the filo like that. And so if I am flavoring it one way, what I'm hoping you will see that you can flavor it a different way. You can use a different spice blend to flavor the filo sheets. Can we talk about biscuits for a little while? Oh, my God. Let's talk about biscuits. Tell me about the biscuit recipe in the book. Why is this the biscuit recipe you decided to include? So every cookbook that I do, I always do a biscuit recipe and I always do a pound cake. The pound cake is in honor of my grandmother and I'm known for biscuits.

23:40And so I want to play with biscuits. I do two recipes for biscuits. I do the sorghum biscuits and then I do the scallion biscuits. And the sorghum biscuits, I wanted to play with the flour. I'm always saying to people, if you do pancakes, it's a great medium to try new flowers because you're not waiting for it to rise. It's a very simple, inexpensive way to test flower. And I think bisque is the same way. But I love the nuttiness of sorghum. I really wanted people to try sorghum. I mean that it is a grain that is known in West Africa. I was like, I really I love sorghum. I really wanted to be part of the sorghum board.

24:30When I was introduced to sorghum, when I was working on Chasing Flavor and Soul Food, I was like, hi, sorghum people. Carla Hall here. The new face of sorghum. The new face of sorghum. So that recipe was really for a really quick, easy drop biscuit with a different flour. The scallion biscuits is part of the sausage biscuit casserole. Right. So I really wanted a flavorful biscuit that could stand on its own, but also that you can do a version of a strata, but with biscuits. And so it's an homage to biscuits and gravy. Yeah, I really love that recipe in the book. And I think in general, the book does such an interesting job of reminding people that, like, yes, pancakes count as baking.

25:15Like, yes, a casserole counts as baking. I think sometimes you think of, well, it has to be a flaky pastry or a cake or something like that. Right. And a lot of this, when I do the baking shows, we always have a challenge with something savory. And that's the one thing that all the judges love because at this point we're tired of sugar. You need a break. And it's really nice to get something savory. When you go to a bakery and you see savory pastries, do you gravitate towards those ones? Yes. Do you do a mix or just? Oh, I always do a mix. Even when I go out to brunch, I do a mix. I mean, I always get the breakfast dessert, which are pancakes.

25:54But I tell them, you know, hold back, bring the savory stuff. And my husband will say, oh, I want the pancakes for breakfast. I'm like, for breakfast breakfast or breakfast dessert? Like, I don't want to start with that. I need something savory and then go into sweet. So I always have the breakfast pancake. So I want both sweet and savory. Yeah, I think breakfast dessert is such a good term because you have a really good breakfast dessert in the book, which is this like creme brulee grits situation. Girl. OK, so let me tell you about this. This was so tongue in cheek. And it's because when I talk about grits and I talk about sweet grits, people are like, what?

26:32I can't believe it. Sugar doesn't belong in the grits. And I'm like, but when you have cream of wheat, oatmeal, rice in the morning and grits, generally they have butter and sugar. because it's a porridge. It's a breakfast thing. I mean, in the South, it's a breakfast thing. And I love savory oatmeal too. So for all those people who are looking at this recipe and you don't put sugar in your grits, you will have to, to do the grits brulee. That's your kind of advocacy for sweet grits. 100%. 100. And I honestly, I had no idea where this recipe was going. It was one of those tongue and cheek and I'm like, could there be such a thing as a grits brulee?

27:16Only because I really wanted to do a recipe with grits and sugar. Can we talk about the brulee part of it? Do you need a blowtorch or can you just do it in the oven? You can do it in the oven. If you do it in the oven, I would suggest you really, really get the brulees cold. And so that way you can put it under the broiler. So that'll help it caramelize without turning everything to mush. Something also I enjoy is the cake section. I think Cousin Ice kind of, there's like more of a relaxed cake. There's more of a kind of elaborate cake. What makes a cake celebratory to you? It depends. So I think in the cake chapter, I start with the coconut cake with chocolate chips.