Sweetful Soul
Medium: Publication Design and Packaging
“Sweetful Soul” was born from my continual journey to reconnect with my African American roots in the South and my lifelong love of baking. As our current administration aims to diminish Black history, I wanted to highlight the influence of African Americans within Southern cuisine, as both producers and cooks, while exploring the deep and complex history that has shaped our food. Taking inspiration from the vintage Soul Food cookbooks I learned to bake from, this book focuses on classic dessert recipes within the Black community mixed with writings on historical aspects of the region’s food culture. The accompanying “Sweetful Soul Baking Company” line of products are ingredients central to those desserts whose production history relied, at least in part, on enslaved labor, namely harvesting and milling wheat to make flour and working sugarcane plantations to produce both refined sugar and molasses. This project is inspired by that legacy and the bakers whose foods have brought African American families and communities together for generations.
