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Food is a powerful tool for connection. This is never more true than when it applies to the Black recipes that hold places of honor on our tables. But what would happen if that favorite dessert or casserole simply disappeared?
“A lot of times, people would say, ‘Oh, my grandma makes this recipe’ [because] they never made the recipe themselves. So when grandma passes, it’s gone,” observes Sonja Norwood, the digital creator behind Wick’d Confections and the viral “Lost Black American Recipes” series on Instagram and Tiktok.
She says many individuals’ connections to these lost recipes were through elders who they did not learn from directly. “What I noticed about our society now is we’re very individualistic and [our ancestors] were not. They were very community driven. That’s why a lot of these recipes were lost, because the community was lost. We’re losing recipes,” she states about the urgency of keeping these old recipes from fading away. So she did something about it.
This year during Black History Month, the Houston, Texas, native blew up social media with her “Lost Black American Recipes” series, which turned the spotlight on obscure recipes disappearing from Black kitchens.
With her deadpan yet saucy delivery and glamorous hair and makeup, Norwood breaks down the “lost recipes” in her 15-30 seconds videos. She’d share a brief history while filming the steps to prepare them, then post the full recipe in the captions of each video. It was a hit and her social media reach swelled to 956,000 followers on Instagram and 1.2 million followers on TikTok, as of this writing.
Searching For Lost Recipes
It all started when Norwood saw a YouTube video about vinegar pie. “They were talking about the Black American connection to it, but didn’t say how to make the pie. It just said, ‘Oh, vinegar pie, Black people made this.’ So I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to make that for Black History Month,'” she shares about the inspiration behind her popular digital series.
But Norwood, a decorative cookie baker who competed on the Food Network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge,” went beyond just making the pie. Instead, she dug deeper into the recipe’s history. What she found was that vinegar pie, a.k.a. “desperation pie,” was born from necessity “when fruit and citrus were scarce and home cooks used simple pantry staples to create something sweet, comforting and joyful.”
That lore behind the recipe was what resonated with Norwood’s followers. “So many people were sharing their stories in the comments…And I realized, ‘Wow, this is really fulfilling a need for people,’” she says.
Due to the high demand, and how the series helped individuals connect with their history, the self-taught baker posted a new video from her “Lost Black American Recipes” series daily throughout Black History Month. Some of the intriguing lost recipes she’s spotlighted include Burnt Sugar Cake, Sweet Potato Slump, Chicken Mull, Rice Johnny and Blackberry Dumplings.
To track down lost recipes, the content creator likes to mine the memories of family and friends. She shares, “The first thing I do is ask, ‘Are there any old recipes that you guys remember?’ Obviously [the recipes] are not completely gone. Somebody still made every single recipe somewhere. They’re just not mainstream or they’re regional things that a lot of people hadn’t heard about. “
She continues, “And even if they had heard about [the lost recipes], they didn’t know the reason why they made those things because it’s just become a part of our life. You never question those things. So I thought it was very important to learn the history behind the recipes.”
Deep Dive Into Black American Dessert Recipes
Norwood research and curates the lost recipes, sometimes piecing and modernizing them. “One of my friends told me about Sweet Potato Slump. I looked at the history of it [and] it’s basically a sweet potato cobbler. But I like the word ‘slump’ better. I thought, ‘We never heard that word before.’ So I had to look up ‘How to make a ‘slump’ and then ‘how to make a sweet potato cobbler.’ Then I had to weave those recipes together,” details Norwood about her process.
Balancing digital content creation with her job as a full-time high school art teacher means Norwood sometimes works late into the night to produce her videos, especially when she posted daily throughout Black History Month for the “Lost Black American Recipes” series.
She’d research lost recipes and put together its educational points in advance then go shopping for the recipes’ ingredients, if needed, and put together her video script. “If I got home at three or four o’clock, then by six o’clock I would be filming. But by the time I’m done, sometimes it’s two and three o’clock in the morning. People would say, ‘Oh, I like these late night drops.’ That’s literally when I finished. As soon as I finished, I posted it,” says Norwood about the videos she films herself in her home kitchen. “I had to really push through. I was so tired.”
Get the Recipe: Sonja Norwood’s Blackberry Dumpling
From Candles to Artsy Dessert Recipes
Making social media content that looks as good as it taste comes second nature to Norwood. Her culinary journey began in 2016 with her business dubbed Wick’d Confections.
Taking inspiration from the culinary world, she crafted dessert look-alike candles, soaps and bath bombs, making them available at boutiques. “I actually started out making candles that looked like cupcakes. I have a science and an art background; I double majored in biology and art. So I made these really cute, really pretty cupcake candles and that’s where the [social media name] Wick’d Confections comes from. It’s a play on the words candle and wick.”
Her move to making edible confections came in 2018. “There was this huge push for decorative sugar cookies,” relates the Texas-based creator about the food trend that inspired her shift from candles to culinary. She sold her meticulously detailed cookies online and after less than a year secured a slot as a competitor on Food Network’s “Christmas Cookie Challenge.” While she didn’t win, Norwood continued to design and sell her decorated cookies to an appreciative online customer base.
But the baker was looking for something more. “The problem with the decorative cookies is a lot of times people don’t know they’re cookies,” points out Norwood. “I was making hand-painted portrait cookies, but I always had to label it ‘This is a cookie’, because people thought it’s artwork. There’s no appetite appeal.”
She adds, “When I was doing the decorative stuff, I realized I didn’t like it because it stifled my creativity. I had to do what other people wanted and maybe not what I wanted.” While family and friends suggested she open a bakery, that idea didn’t appeal to her either.”
So, Norwood transitioned from creating intricate, artistic cookies to making baked goods with “appetite appeal” like frothy, frosted layer cakes and oozy chocolate-chip cookies. “I started baking things that are gooey and soft, things that people can relate to,” she details.
While the baker didn’t sell any of these creations, she did post them online and decided to become an expert resource for followers who wanted to try their hand making her recipes.
“I’d rather be a resource than work for you,” she notes about how her online presence puts the emphasis on teaching. “I don’t want to make your cake, but I’ll show you how to do it. That’s what my social media is about. That’s why I share recipes,” says the digital content creator.
Her polished online persona grabs as much attention as her content. There are commenters online who think Norwood is AI generated thanks to her even delivery, continuous eye contact and glossy skin. (That glow, by the way, is courtesy of Anastasia Beverly Hills Shimmer Body Oil.)
“Some people are there for the recipes. Some people are there for the why behind the recipes. Some people are there for both. Some people are there just for my outfit,” she laughs.
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Preserving the History of Black Recipes
But no matter how it’s delivered or packaged, Norwood hopes shining the light on “Lost Black American Recipes” will inspire others to follow Black culture through these old and often lost recipes.
“A lot of things were lost because of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but a lot of things survived as well,” she says. “I think this series really showed Black American culture and it also showed how it blends [with] other things. Like when I talk about the hibiscus tea, that had to survive the Middle Passage on someone. So from West Africa, they brought this hibiscus tea with them. And then even when Latino commenters [on my videos] say, ‘Oh, we call this Agua de Jamaica.’ So [the tea] was crossing cultures. And I’m like, ‘Oh, the Jamaica’s right there in the name because that was through trade routes.”
She continues, “You can trace the recipes through the way the African Diaspora happened. And it’s a nice way to present a history to some individuals who might not actually think about it.”
In the spirit of further spotlighting lost recipes from the culture, Norwood says she will continue the “Lost Black American Recipes” series on her platforms, posting once a week on the topic.
“I hope that people take more of an interest in our history, which is amazing,” she muses. “And, then also that they understand how amazing our ancestors were. How the people who came before us are able to make something so genius out of so little.”
