"I was thinking about marshmallows and what pairs with them, and I was like, Of course! Sweet potatoes and pecans! The sweet potato casserole flavors."
That's Jerrelle Guy, blogger, author of the new book Black Girl Baking, and inventor of what may be the best rice crispy treats you'll ever eat. In her cookbook, Guy aims to move away from rigidity. She wants to break the rules of baking and the rules of health. So those sweet potatoes are in your rice crispy treats because they taste good, they add bright, fun color, and because they remind Guy of Thanksgiving. If there's an added health benefit, all the better.
Black Girl Baking took root when Guy moved to Boston in 2015 to start grad school. She felt isolated in her new city. "It was a culture shock," she says. "Not only because of my skin color, but because there were so many new ways of thinking. And pretentious people."
Baking provided solace—in particular, baking outside the lines of traditional recipes. "Usually baking is so rigid," Guy says. "You have to follow all of the rules. [But] baking for me is this intuitive thing. It relaxes me and gives me a place of self expression where I can work through things."
This was also around the time the Black Girl Magic hashtag starting popping on Twitter. "That hashtag for me is all about finding beauty in how we are right now and not needing to change into some textbook cutout of what is acceptable," Guy explains. A riff on the hashtag seemed apropos for her out-of-the-box recipes.
Which brings us back to the sweet potato rice crispy treats. The recipe calls for puffed brown rice instead of regular rice cereal. It's necessary to go with the whole grain because it holds up better to the starchiness of the potato—regular rice cereal will result in a gummy bar, Guy warns. Plus, the whole grain cereal adds nuttiness and extra depth of flavor that pairs well with the pecan, and that's what it's really about—the flavor.
The bars can be made totally vegan if you use vegan butter and marshmallows, and that's the case with most of the recipes in the book. "I used to be vegan when I was young because I had a weight problem. It was also an identity thing. I was trying to create an identity for myself. I also used to be afraid of any refined, white grain. But, this book is more about how I eat now. I love eating vegan and I love the flavor of whole grains, but I don’t keep rigid rules about it. I want to celebrate eating whatever you feel like eating."
