Meet the Ultimate Cookbook for Healthy, Homemade Food

Plenty of cookbooks claim to be uncomplicated, but after years of demonstrating easy recipes for home cooks on The Chew, Hall actually delivered on that promise. You can find all of her ingredients at your everyday grocery store, and you won’t need fancy equipment like a mandoline slicer or the hottest new blending device. That makes it realistic to whip up three different veggie dishes in one night (as Hall often does), like chopped salad with buttermilk dressing, blackened beans with lemon and chile, and smashed potatoes with mustard mayonnaise drizzle.

Vegetables do compose a hefty chunk of the book, but it’s still full of indulgent celebration foods, like meaty tomato mac and cheese and fried shrimp with creamy comeback sauce. There’s also an entire section on beans and several pages devoted to cornmeal for classics like johnnycakes, cornbread, and grits. And if you can get through the savory section before running to the kitchen, you’ll drool all over the desserts pages, which includes banana pudding, sweet potato pie, a homemade version of Little Debbie oatmeal cookies, and a strawberry cake that smells like summer.

And maybe best of all: Carla Hall’s Soul Food is more than just a cookbook: It’s a history of the cuisine. While it would be easy to believe that her fluffy angel biscuits magically appeared from the heavens, Hall makes it clear in the introduction that her recipes date back much further than her lifetime. She explains that soul food, “the true food of African Americans,” originates from slaves, who relied on seasonal vegetables, beans, and grains as their foundational diet. “For this book, I tried to imagine what my ancestors would be cooking from the farm if they were alive today,” Hall writes. “By looking to our roots, I’m showing you how delicious and healthy true soul food is.” These personal stories, dispersed throughout the book, make each bite just as meaningful as it is tasty.

If you’re itching to test out Carla Hall’s Soul Food, here’s a holiday-ready recipe you’ll want the whole family to try. Canola oil replaces much of the butter for a lighter cake, and lemony curd boosts the brightness of the cream cheese frosting.

Gingerbread Layer Cake With Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

(Serves 12)

Go all out for Christmas. This cake combines the warmth of wintry gingerbread with a lemony frosting that tastes like sunshine. When I made this for my family, my nieces and nephews went crazy over it. It was the best gift I could’ve given them.

Make ahead: The cake layers keep at room temperature tightly wrapped for up to 2 days. The lemon curd can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. The assembled cake can be refrigerated for up to 1 day.

Ingredients:

Gingerbread Cake:

• 4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for the pans
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups packed dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
• 2/3 cup molasses
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup canola oil

Lemon Frosting:

• 2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest
• 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large egg yolks
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
• 2 (8-ounce) blocks cream cheese, softened
• Confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Instructions:

1. Make the cake. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans, line with parchment paper, and butter the parchment.
2. Sift the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, molasses, and vanilla. In a small bowl, stir together the hot water and buttermilk.
3. Mix the dry ingredients on low speed until well blended. Add the 4 tablespoons butter and the oil and continue mixing on low until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. With the machine running, add the egg mixture and beat just until incorporated, then add the buttermilk mixture in a steady stream. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl and mix again just until evenly combined. Divide the batter evenly among the three prepared pans.
4. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. When you lightly touch the top of the cake, it should feel a little bouncy but still show the indentation of your finger. Let cool in the pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Unmold the cakes and place top side up on the racks. Let cool completely.5. Make the lemon frosting. Whisk the lemon zest and juice, granulated sugar, egg yolks, and 6 tablespoons of the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until bubbles begin to form around the edges of the pan, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and stir continuously with a spatula until thick enough to coat the spatula, about 10 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl.
5. Stir in the remaining 4 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, letting each addition melt before adding the next. Press plastic wrap directly against the surface and refrigerate until cold and stiff.
6. Beat the cream cheese by hand in a large bowl just until smooth. Whisk the lemon curd to loosen it, then add to the cream cheese. Fold until well combined.
7. Assemble the cake. Place one cake layer, bottom side up, on a cake plate. Spread one third of the lemon cream evenly on top, leaving a 1-inch rim, and gently press another cake layer, bottom side up, on top. Spread half of the remaining lemon cream on its top, leaving a 1-inch rim; then top with the final cake layer, top side up. You can either dust with confectioners’ sugar and serve with the remaining lemon cream or spread the remaining cream on top. Refrigerate until set, at least 2 hours.

As a Power of Women honoree, Mariska was recognized in regards to her work as an advocate for sexual assault survivors. She took the stage and used her platform to discuss rape and assault conviction reversals, shining a light on the recent overturned ruling in Harvey Weinstein's landmark NYC case. Here's what she said:

Today I want to talk about reversing convictions, and more specifically I want to talk to you about how impossible it is to reverse mine. It’s impossible to reverse my conviction that survivors matter. It is impossible to reverse my conviction that what happens to us matters, and that our society must respond to survivors with a more a compassionate, holistically, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of what healing means.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that after a trauma, survivors can reclaim lives of hope, of possibility, of audacious risk, beautiful intimacy, and glorious, glorious abundant joy. And I stand before you as evidence of that statement.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that we must listen to survivors as experts on what justice means. It is extraordinary how little their voices are consulted, let alone incorporated, in the process of deciding how to repair harm. Justice is not a one-size-fits-all journey.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that patriarchal impunity has to end. Patriarchal impunity is when a male-dominated system exempts perpetrators from punishment. Studies show that only 20% of all rape cases in the U.S. are reported to the police, and that between 5 and 0% of all rapes result in a guilty plea or a conviction. So why do 80% of victims not report? Because they're met with a system that grants impunity to perpetrators; a system that blames victims; a system that accepts only those victims who are experienced as "real" rape; a system that completely misunderstands the neurobiology of trauma, which causes behavior in women that doesn't fit the picture of how a "real victim" would act.

Is that change needed that victims should just pull themselves together? Just buck up and report anyway? No. No, it's the system that receives them that needs to change

It is impossible to reverse my conviction — and the conviction of my extraordinary team, The Joyful Heart — that the backlog of untested rape kits can be brought to zero; that the testing of all new kits must be mandated; that we need a statewide kit tracking system; and that survivors have the right to access the status of their kits.

It is impossible to reverse my conviction that grammar — yes, grammar — that we use when we speak about rape must change. In the sentence, "A woman is raped," there's a crime and there's a victim, but there's no perpetrator. Where's the perpetrator? Where is he? Statistically, as we know, most likely he's walking free. He's so free that he doesn't even appear in the language about the crime that he committed. Is that not extraordinary? It's extraordinary that in the very grammar, the perpetrator goes free. Reintroducing perpetrators in the language of rape will make some very unwieldy grammar, but that's the nature of change. It's unwieldy, it's messy, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.

Hargitay continued on in her prolific speech to describe that rape shouldn't be considered a "crime of passion" because it's "not simply the next step in the trajectory of his passion" when a man takes a consensual hookup too far and assaults a woman against her will. She stated that it's "an exercise of power," doubling down that the language we use is important.

The speech went on to address that rape is both about power and control, as a "construct" that was "built, and assembled, and reinforced over time." She noted that there are people with these positions of power — and she specifically called out those in the entertainment industry — that could make a difference and aligned themselves to victims and survivors.

After this and some other remarks, Hargitay specifically called out the Weinstein conviction reversal. She said:

I do want to say something about the Harvey Weinstein conviction, specifically about the reason that it was overturned: too many women's voices. Too many women's voices were allowed to speak. Hallelujah! Amen! I can't imagine anything more beautiful than that. The Daily podcast episode talked about how it was so risky for the prosecution to have that many women testify. Risky to let women speak? You're damn right it is!

Too many women speaking brings change. Too many women speaking shakes the establishment. Too many women means we get listened to more, and people might actually hear what we have to say. Look what happened when women started saying just two words, right? Me too — just as an example — a tidal wave of change. Me too.

And then of course, there was the response: the Me Too Movement. The backlash. The examination of whether the changes that have come are lasting, or are even positive. Of course there's a backlash! What did they expect? For women to speak repeatedly, loudly, together, with a purpose — for there to be no backlash? The backlash is evidence of how powerful those voices were, how powerful those voices ARE.

Watch Mariska Hargitay's Full Speech Here

Turns out that your TV heroes really can be your IRL heroes after all. Long live Olivia Benson! Long live Mariska Hargitay!