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♪ ♪ - Savannah is a city that loves the past and when it comes to food, that means crab-stuffed, pecan-crusted, or even corn bread-fried.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ But when it comes to desserts, Cheryl Day of Back in the Day Bakery has doubled down on culinary history... - Good morning!

- Hey, how are ya?

- How are you?

- Nice to finally meet you.

- Welcome to Savannah.

- ...whether it's her three-layer chocolate cake, or perhaps her sweet potato cupcakes with cream cheese caramel frosting.

- So yeah, let me give you a tour of the new space.

- So this-this used to be your dining room?

- Yes, this used to be our dining room, and now we have put up a wall and put in a little retail area.

And then we sell our greatest hits, the baked goods.

- So what are your greatest hits?

- Well, it depends on the time of year, we're gonna be making some of them today.

- You know, Savannah is more than a taste of the past.

The past just never left town.

♪ ♪ - I have all of my family kind of watching over me.

These are all old family photos.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Cheryl, thank you so much for hosting us.

I mean this is, like, the most beautiful bakery ever.

It's cool.

- Thank you.

- But... so I was shocked when you told me...

I thought you were, like, born and bred Savannah, but you are-- you grew up in L.A. - I grew up in L.A., born and raised.

I was actually born in Hollywood.

- Hmm.

- And I grew up in Los Angeles, and yeah... - As a kid, though, you did come to this part of the country like in the summers, right?

- I did, I think my mom, since she was from the South, thought it was really important for me to kind of see a different way of life and... growing up in Los Angeles, so I came from about the age of eight and I spent summers with my grandmother.

And it was just a way of life that was so different from what I was used to and I just fell in love with it.

- So was your grandmother the baker in the family?

- She was one of the bakers in the family, and as it turns out, I come from a long line of bakers.

It goes back to my great-great grandmother who was enslaved, and I found out that she was actually a pastry cook also.

I think once I found out that baking has been in my DNA for so long, really gave me clarity of purpose.

And I realized that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

- Everybody says they have the best chocolate cake, but you actually do have the best chocolate cake.

- I do have the best chocolate cake.

- You do-- and you're not shy about saying it, I would just point that out.

- I've had a lot of chocolate cakes and I've worked really hard on maybe thinking, okay, well, maybe there's another chocolate cake.

And it turns out that it started with my grandmother's chocolate cake that I learned how to make in Alabama one of those very early years, at eight.

♪ ♪ So the first thing is we have really great chocolate.

It's unsweetened chocolate, so we are going to melt it with hot, strong coffee.

And then my little trick to keeping it kind of tented the heat is the plastic wrap.

So if you could cover that back up.

- Sure.

- Then it'll do the melting for us.

This is actually a cake my grandmother used to refer to as her chocolate church cake.

And I guess because you wanted it after church on Sunday?

So I just added the oil into the bowl and now we're gonna add some beautiful eggs, four of them.

We're going to emulsify the eggs and the oil until it's really light in color, starting to build the structure.

This is sour cream.

I like to call this my chocolate mayonnaise that we're building here.

We're gonna whisk it, but it's still gonna look like cottage cheese.

I would stop right there.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah, I don't want to overmix it at this stage.

Add in a whole tablespoon vanilla.

And what I have is sugar, cake flour, salt, and baking soda.

Sift all of those ingredients and aerate the flour and make sure that all the leavenings and salt are incorporated.

So we're gonna add the chocolate into our other wet ingredients-- the oil, the eggs, the vanilla, and very carefully, we need to add all of this into the dry.

I love making this cake.

It literally is the first thing I learned how to make with my grandmother, and it's still my favorite chocolate cake of all time.

- Have you fiddled around with it in the last 20, 30 years?

- I fiddled a little, but it was pretty perfect.

♪ ♪ So I'm just gonna pour this amongst these three pans.

Chocolatey, loose batter.

- Now if I made this, didn't know it was your cake... - Right, right... - I would go, like, wasn't enough flour in this.

- Right, keep going.

(laughs) So I just gave it a little... (loud knock) tap to get those air bubbles out.

And it bakes at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes, or until it's finished.

A chocolate cake, you don't want to overbake.

- So, as a baker, you know, baking is the thing that people are scared of doing and a lot of people, starting out in cooking, you know, fear is their biggest, like, thing to overcome.

How do you know when it's done?

- (laughing): Okay.

- How do you know when it's done?

- Baker's intuition.

All your senses-- your eyes, your nose, you can smell when certain things are done.

You know, when you're starting to smell the chocolate, and honestly, I mean, you're gonna make mistakes and take notes-- you know, could you have taken it out a couple of minutes or 30 seconds?

I mean, I tell people all the time a minute is like a lifetime with cookies or a cake or some... - Everybody overbakes, by the way.

- Exactly, but you have to visually know when you're gonna pull a cake out.

Just a little tiny little crumbs on a cake.

I think that's something you just have to be able to sense with everything.

Look at this cake, it's beautiful.

It's moist and it's everything you want a chocolate cake...

I think we can solve a lot of problems if everyone knew how to make a really great chocolate cake.

So we're gonna make the frosting now.

Just some butter.

And then we're going to just get that started in our mixer.

And then I'm gonna go ahead and add in the milk.

And, as we all know, it's gonna take a minute for that liquid to want to incorporate into all of this fat.

So that's exactly where we want our butter to be.

So this is the tricky part-- is to get all this melted chocolate in.

♪ ♪ And then we'll let that incorporate.

We're going to add our confectioner's sugar.

I have quite a bit sifted here.

And just gradually add it in.

I say that's perfect frosting.

So I'm gonna start with a dollop of chocolate frosting on the bottom, and then I'm going to start building the layers.

So I like to flip it over.

- Right.

- Perfectly level.

And then we're going to build the frosting.

This is kind of an old fashioned cake, so I put the last layer dome up.

- Yeah.

- I am a fan of crumb coating for some cakes, but this is a cake that... with a little practice, if you don't bear down too much, you won't really pick up any crumb.

So for a true Sunday church cake my grandmother would have picked some edible flowers out of her garden.

- You've done a perfect job.

And now I'm gonna mess it up at the last second.

- No, you're not gonna mess it up because I happen to know you're an excellent baker.

- Yeah, but I may not be an excellent sprinkler.

- Let's have fun, Chris.

- Oh, we're just gonna go crazy here?

- Yeah.

There's no right or wrong, it's gonna be beautiful.

- You know what, I'm gonna stop being so delicate and just do it, okay?

- I love it.

Now, let's eat cake.

- Let them eat cake, yes-- thank you.

- I feel like this is definitely the moment we've been waiting for.

Did you see how nicely that sliced?

- Wow.

- Yeah.

Here we go.

- And this cake deserves a gold fork, I noticed.

- (laughing) - Mm... ♪ ♪ Sometimes the frosting doesn't go with a cake.

I mean, the frosting is intimately connected to the cake-- does that make any sense?

- Thank you.

That's the goal.

- This is light, but it's got-- it's got real deep chocolatiness to it.

I mean, it's really chocolatey.

I don't say this very often, but this is the best chocolate cake ever.

- Well, that is the best compliment ever.

I appreciate that, thank you.

- Mmm.

Sweet potatoes obviously are a staple of Southern cooking and baking.

- Right.

- And you make sweet potato cupcakes that are spectacular.

- That is a very unusual method, actually.

We're going to start with brown sugar and eggs and getting those whipped, rather than in a cake, where you would cream the butter.

But we're gonna get the brown sugar and eggs really light and fluffy.

We're going to add our sweet potatoes and orange zest.

I love orange zest with sweet potatoes.

I think it just really brings out the flavor.

A lot of old fashioned cakes, like chiffon cake use vegetable oil.

- Right, a lot of Southern recipes did not use butter back in the day.

So we're just gonna mix that in and then start to emulsify the oil in.

♪ ♪ I mean, how could this not be moist with sweet potatoes?

And oil.

- And brown sugar.

- And brown sugar.

Right.

So here, we've got our leavenings, we've got baking soda, baking powder, salt-- always salt, of course, for sweet things.

- Can we just talk about that for a second?

- Sure!

- I notice a lot of old recipes don't add salt.

- Yes, that's true.

- A lot of people just think salt's not for sweet things.

- Right.

- But you disagree.

- I disagree-- and you're right, a lot of old recipes which, I was gifted many old recipes, and that's the first thing I always add.

- Yeah, me too.

- Is salt.

So we have cloves, cinnamon, mace, and ginger.

Lots of spices in here to elevate all those flavors.

And I do love all of these warm spices.

To me, they're very nostalgic and kind of unexpected to mix so many things instead of just having one flavor, one note.

All right, so now we're going to add in thirds... ish, the dry with that milk over there.

(mixer whirring) And I still bake exactly how my grandmother taught me, which was to always start with your flour and end with your flour because you're building the structure and you don't want to overmix, but you do want to build it enough where you're gonna get a nice, delicate crumb.

So this is almost done.

I'm just gonna get these scooped out.

I do love using, like, an ice cream disher for consistency.

You wouldn't want to charge someone, you know, different price for a smaller product.

Just topping those off.

So we'll pop these in the oven, 350, 20 to 25 minutes.

♪ ♪ - The frosting on that has a little bit of salted caramel?

- It does.

- Thrown in.

- Yeah, it has salted caramel cream cheese frosting.

So we're just gonna cream up our cream cheese.

I like a really light and fluffy cream cheese frosting.

And then, of course, there is butter.

Put that in.

And I have a little extra little pinch of salt that I'm gonna add in.

Because, again, a little salt with our sweet.

I find that sometimes Southern recipes are cloyingly sweet and that salt does help.

So then next we're gonna add our confectioner sugar.

And then just to gild the lily, I'm gonna add a little bit of our caramel.

- It's really important you leave a little bit at the bottom of this container.

- Yeah.

(laughs) We could also warm this up a little bit and... - Put it over ice cream.

- There you go.

- There you go.

- Put that down... - Do you think Southern baking gets a bad rap about sweetness?

Is that notion that sometimes Southern baking is so sweet, it was also really sweet in the north, too, right?

- Yeah, that's true.

I think, actually, I think Southern food probably gets a bad rap.

- Yeah.

- For a lot of things, so... it's true, and like you said, a lot of those older recipes, all of them didn't have salt.

So there we have perfect cream cheese frosting with our salted caramel.

- You're just gonna see if I have enough self-control not to stick my finger in it and eat it... - I'll leave a little bit for ya.

Here we are.

Sweet potato cupcakes are out of the oven.

- And this is a great place to be.

- And this is a great place to be.

I have one for you.

- Okay.

- And one for me.

We're just gonna frost these.

I do start with a little scoop.

- That's a good idea.

- Yeah, you know, portion control.

Again, everyone can get the same.

And I hand-frost all of my cupcakes.

So I just, kind of, like them to look very.... homespun.

- So, wait a minute, you hand-frost all of your cupcakes here?

- I do-- just like that.

Sweet potatoes remind me of sweet potato souffle, what they call in the South.

So I like to kind of gild the lily and we'll just put some marshmallows, piled like that, and at the end we're gonna torch 'em.

(laughs) It has just a very nostalgic, child-like quality.

- I have a very mysterious child-like quality.

- (laughing) - There was never any doubt that you're a professional, but you pulled this thing out, the plumber torch.

- Just... quick little torch.

And there are our sweet potato cupcakes.

- Mm... (chuckles) I'm hearing music.

- (laughs) - Celestial music.

And that salt in the salted caramel really grounds it, you know?

- Mm-hmm.

- I think you're right, I think it's really important.

I can tell you love what you do, 'cause you've been here 20 years?

And you're still eating your own cupcakes.

And that's a really good sign.

Sweet potato cupcakes with caramel frosting, with scorched marshmallows on top.

These are... these are the best cupcakes absolutely ever.

- Aww.

- And there's a lot of cupcakes in the world, so that's really saying something.

Thank you, Cheryl.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪ - It's funny, Bundt cakes are often... seem common, in some way, but you make a Bundt cake that is not common at all, it's uncommon.

- I think the thing that makes it uncommon-- I mean, it starts with kind of a nostalgic memory, the one that we're making today, it's a brown sugar Bundt cake with a butterscotch glaze.

And I think the thing that makes it, um, really special is the spices.

It has just really warm, delicious spices.

Just lots of great, elevated flavors with those spices, I feel.

- There's Bundt cake, and then there's Cheryl Day's Bundt cake.

So we're gonna do Cheryl Day's Bundt cake right now.

- Yes, and this is a brown sugar Bundt cake.

What could be better than that?

Again, with some really great spices.

So we're gonna start with brown sugar.

(pan clanging) And some butter.

- That's some butter.

- Yeah, that is some butter.

- Yeah, that's some butter.

We're going to go ahead and cream this until it's light and fluffy.

♪ ♪ So, Chris, now I'm gonna add the vanilla, the lemon zest... Just until incorporated.

So now, with the mixer running on low, we're gonna add the eggs-- one at a time.

♪ ♪ So now we're gonna add the dry ingredients, and we've got cardamom, baking powder, salt, of course, and mace.

I'm gonna whisk those all together.

- So cardamom is not a typical American, Southern... - It isn't.

- ...baking spice, is that something you've now started incorporating in other recipes?

- I have, I do love using cardamom and I love using other spices that I see often in savory foods and then I like to play around with them in baking.

Like, I love coriander and... but cardamom, I think, that kind of, is a nod to Griff's family, which was Norwegian, and that's a lot of the baking-- they use cardamom.

- They use it in cookies and other things.

- Everything.

- Yeah.

- And we find that it just adds a really great floral flavor.

So just on low... (mixer whirring) in thirds.

Again, starting with my dry, alternating with good old sour cream.

Sour cream, butter... can't go wrong.

- Well, your classic...

I think what I'm going to take away from this day with you, is your use of the word "some."

Some butter... - Yeah.

- Some sour cream... - Right.

- Some brown sugar.

Yeah.

- So... that is our brown sugar Bundt cake, and this looks absolutely perfect to me.

So now, this is gonna go into a Bundt pan for about an hour, at 325.

♪ ♪ So our cake is out of the oven and cooled.

It baked at 325.

So this is the brown sugar glaze.

It's almost... this really reminds me of these butterscotch candies that my grandmother used to keep.

And it's basically just brown sugar, more butter, and heavy cream, a little bit of salt.

- I think you meant to say, "some butter," didn't you, Cheryl?

- (laughs) Some butter.

- Yeah, some butter.

- So what I find works well is when you're glazing, if you start from the out, kind of on the outside, like that, then your drizzle will kind of slowly go.

And then you get a nice little drip.

so I'll let you finish up, Chris.

And then we're gonna taste it.

Yeah, I love making Bundt cakes, they're so simple.

I know a lot of times people are worried about getting them out of the pan.

I do butter and flour most of the time.

Sometimes I'll just use a cooking spray as well.

And I find that if you let it cool just enough where it's not gonna break apart... so, 30 minutes, the pan is, you know, warm enough to the touch, it's not hot.

Then you can just turn it right out.

And that looks beautiful.

So what do you think, should we try some?

(laughter) - These are always these sort of, like, moments, right, in cooking?

It's that five seconds before you eat it.

- Yeah, I'm pretty excited-- are you?

- Yeah, I'm pretty excited.

- Okay, I think, let's dig in.

Okay... Is that a good slice for you?

- Slicing well, too.

- Yeah, it's slicing very well.

I always tell new bakers that they should be a little nervous when they're pulling out a cake or a pie, right?

You want to be a little nervous and excited.

I thought you were supposed to make people feel confident.

You're not supposed to make them nervous.

- (laughing) I do... but I just think there is a reverence in realizing that you're doing something special.

- What really makes it, I mean, is the glaze with the Bundt cake, because there isn't that much on it, it's just a little taste of glaze, but... mmm.

Brown sugar Bundt cake with a caramel frosting.

This is great-- thank you, Cheryl.

- Thank you.

- Mmm.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪