Patti Labelle - DESSERTS LABELLE: soulful sweets to sing about

I know what youre thinking: A dessert cookbook from me? Patti LaBelle? The woman who, for the better part of two decades, has been telling anyone who will listen she is diabetic? The one who lost her mother to diabetes-related complications long before her time? The woman who served as spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association? Yes, yes, and yes. Ive got some sweet recipes I need to share. Sweet stories I need to tell. And what better time to share them than right now? Right here.

One story in particular provides the perfect launch.

I call it the Patti Pie Phenomenonthe PPP for short. It happened a few years ago, when a fan purchased one of my sweet potato pies from Walmart, then posted a review on YouTube singing its praises. Literally. His passionate performance immediately went viral. (James Wright Chanel, you know you can sing!) Twenty million views later, everyone was rushing out to get their hands on one of my sweet potato pies. In 48 hours, every single one of those pies sold out at every single Walmart store. And that was just the beginning. When word leaked that no one at the store knew when the pies would be restocked, the would-be pie scalpers started a now-famous resale market. Before the PPP was all over, my sweet potato pieswhich cost $3.48 at Walmartwere selling on eBay for $45. I knew something really serious was happening when people started auctioning them off with bid prices ranging from $50 to $12,000.

What was happening, I have come to realize, was not one phenomenon, but two. The first I dont really, or I should say fully, understand; the second Im pretty sure I do. The phenomenon I dont fully understand is the one I just described: the PPP. Since it happened, Ive gone from wondering if I have some kind of mystical/spiritual/ancestral connection to sweet potatoes to being convinced that I do. Theres just no other way to explain it.

My girlfriend Cassie went to school with a woman who would know just what I mean. Cassie doesnt remember her name, so Im going to call her Annie, in honor of Ann Lowe, the African American designer who made Jackie Kennedys wedding dress. Cassie says that from the moment Annie sat down at her mothers rickety old Singer, she could make any outfit you could dream up, draw, or describe. (Think: the red carpet gowns worn at the Met Gala.) Not only did Annie sew like a professional dressmaker from the get-go, Cassie says, she also quilted and embroidered like nobodys business. And she did it all without ever taking so much as a single home economics class, never mind formal sewing lessons. Heres what I believe deep in my soul: Annie had something special that no class, no school, no formal sewing lessons, could provide: her grandmothers genes. Annies grandmother was a master seamstress.

Which brings me back to the PPP. (For the full storyand all the delicious details [pun intended]check out the story behind Gias sweet potato flan ) Im pretty sure my grandmother Tempie had a hand in it. Her homemade breads in general, and sweet potato biscuits in particular, are the stuff of legend. For reasons unrelated to baking skill, I think my sister Barbara had something to do with it, too. (I stayed up all night cooking her favorite foods and baked a dozen of her much-loved sweet potato pies for her wedding and for her funeral.) I know my aunts and my mother were heavily involved in the PPP, and by heavily involved I mean they probably orchestrated the whole thing. Anyone who knew Aunt Hattie Mae, Aunt Joshia Mae, and Chubbythats what everybody called my motherwill tell you they were sweet potato sorceresses. They did things to sweet potatoes, magic things, that made grown men cry. And I am the grateful beneficiary of the unexpected blessings that brings.

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So thats the (mystical/spiritual/magical) phenomenon I believe in but cant really explain. Since it happened, when it comes to the mystic, heres what Ive decided: You can question its existence, or you can let it free you from something, something inexplicable but deeply reassuring, too. Put it this way. I have embraced what the London-based artist Robert Montgomery says: The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive.

I believe the recipes you love become part of something inside of you, too. Something spiritual; something sacred. Because those recipes bring the people who originally cooked them for you into your consciousness as well as your kitchen again, and, as Mr. Montgomery says, like this you keep them alive. Like this you keep them ever close. It says everything that my mothers sweet potato pie is responsible for the PPP, which, in turn, is responsible for the gazillion requests I received to write a cookbook filled with my favorite desserts.