6 Cookbooks by Black Women to Help You Step Up Your Game in the Kitchen

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The ability to throw down in the kitchen isn't inherited. It's a finely tuned skill that all aren't blessed master. So we're happy that so many women have shared their knowledge with us.
1. Grandbaby Cakes: Modern Recipes, Vintage Charm, Soulful Memories
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Grandbaby Cakes: Modern Recipes, Vintage Charm, Soulful Memories is the debut cookbook from sensational food writer, Jocelyn Delk Adams. Since founding her popular recipe blog Grandbaby Cakes in 2012, Adams has been putting fresh twists on old favorites. Adams has earned praise from critics and the adoration of bakers both young and old for her easygoing advice, rich photography, and the heartwarming memories she shares of her family’s generations-old love of baking.
2. Sweetie Pie's Cookbook: Soulful Southern Recipes, from My Family to Yours
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Growing up in Mississippi and St. Louis, Robbie Montgomery, the oldest of nine children, was often responsible for putting meals on the family table. Working side by side with her mother in their St. Louis kitchen, Robbie learned to prepare dozens of classic soul food dishes. Through her show and this special cookbook, Miss Robbie hopes to maintain the place of soul food cooking—its recipes, history, and legacy—in American culture for decades to come.

3. A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen
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In her first cookbook, a revered former cook at Savannah's most renowned restaurant divulges her locally famous Savannah recipes—many of them never written down before—and those of her family and friends

4. My Life on a Plate: Recipes From Around the World
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“My Life on a Plate” tells Kelis' personal story through the food she creates. Her style has been molded by her culture, her travels, and all the people she met along the way. This book is a collection of her favorite recipes. It features a mix of foods from her Puerto Rican heritage, such as Pernil (Puerto Rican Pork Shoulder), Arroz con Gandules, and Shrimp Alcapurias along with dishes she created after discovering them on her travels around the world such as Malay Curry Chicken and Swedish Meatballs.

5. Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family
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In May 2012, bestselling author Alice Randall penned an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Black Women and Fat,” chronicling her quest to be “the last fat black woman” in her family. She turned to her daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, for help. Together they overhauled the way they cook and eat, translating recipes and traditions handed down by generations of black women into easy, affordable, and healthful—yet still indulgent—dishes, such as Peanut Chicken Stew, Red Bean and Brown Rice Creole Salad, Fiery Green Beans, and Sinless Sweet Potato Pie.
6. The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen
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Georgia native Nicole Taylor spent her early twenties trying to distance herself from her southern cooking roots--a move "up" to Brooklyn gave her a fresh appreciation for the bread and biscuits, Classic Fried Chicken, Lemon Coconut Stack Cake, and other flavors of her childhood.

The Up South Cookbook is a bridge to the past and a door to the future. The recipes in this deeply personal cookbook offer classic Southern favorites informed and updated by newly-discovered ingredients and different cultures.