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Carla Hall Keeps Finding New Recipes for Success
The chef, 62, opens up about her new baking book, her 20-year marriage, family traditions and why she’ll never stop talking to strangers
VIDEO: The ‘Top Chef’ Lesson That Changed Carla Hall’s Life
AARP (Courtesy Marvin Joseph)
Last month, Chef Carla Hall, 62, swept into AARP’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., wearing a pair of her signature colorful glasses and radiating the same warmth viewers know from her television appearances.
Hall, an acclaimed chef, TV host, “Top Chef” fan favorite and author, returns to her first culinary love story — baking — with over 80 sweet and savory recipes in “Carla Bakes.”
Photographs copyright © 2026 by Doaa Elkady
Bake with Carla
Hall shares a trio of recipes from Carla Bakes for AARP members to try at home.
Giant Chewy Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwich With Plum Jam and Peanut Butter Buttercream
“There’s nothing more fun than bringing a huge cookie to the table.”
“There’s so much lemon to enjoy that I frost the cake with plain vanilla meringue to give the taste buds a break.”
Chocolate Oat Flour Snack Cake
“Whether you’re sharing or sneaking slices for yourself, this cake satisfies.”
Within minutes, she became comfortable with her surroundings. She complimented my own colorful pair of glasses, how wonderfully chilly the studio was (good for video equipment and “great for postmenopausal women!” she quipped), and how much she loved that our videographer has the same name as her father, George. The interactions offered a genuine glimpse into Hall’s outlook on life.
“I just love meeting strangers,” she says. “I love talking to a stranger on the train or on the street. At an airport, if I am traveling by myself and I’m at a restaurant and I see somebody else in line as a singlet, as I call them, I will go up to them and say, ‘Hey, do you wanna share a table?’”
The best part, Hall adds, is that most of the time they have no idea who she is: “They don’t know me as Carla! I’m just this person. I love it.”
It’s surprising she can still go unrecognized by some. At 5 feet 11 inches tall, the former model has a commanding presence, and after nearly two decades on television, she’s become one of the culinary world’s most recognizable personalities.
Her stardom began in 2008, when she competed on Season 5 of Bravo’s Top Chef. That was followed by another stint on Top Chef and seven years cohosting ABC’s Emmy Award–winning daytime talk show The Chew until it was abruptly canceled in 2018. (She and two of her Chew cohosts, Michael Symon and Clinton Kelly, now helm Chewed Up, an unfiltered food and lifestyle show on YouTube.) And she regularly pops up on television as a guest judge or host.
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That’s not to mention her QVC homeware line, Sweet Heritage; two children’s books; The MeMenu, a personal growth program created with executive coach Deb Riegel; and her one-woman play, Carla Hall: Please Underestimate Me, which ran at Maryland’s Olney Theatre Center in summer 2026.
Now she’s come out with her first baking book: Carla Hall Bakes: Sweet, Savory, and from the Heart. “I have been waiting to do a baking book for so long. I love crafting, and baking is like crafting with food,” she says.
The book contains more than 80 sweet and savory recipes, including Southern Pecan Crinkle Baklava, Fairytale Forest Party Cake and Ham & Cheese Paris-Brest — and her favorite holiday-themed treat, the gingerbread house.
“I really love gingerbread houses,” says Hall. “There is a part of me that I feel like is an engineer, and I love putting things together.”
Here’s more from AARP's conversation with Hall about her new baking book, her grandmother’s influence, and her thoughts on aging.
She learned something about baking better while writing this book.
“One of the things that I wanted for this book is to use different grains. I wanted to do natural sweeteners and, you know, no preservatives. I had all these lofty ideas, right? So I’m making the giant peanut butter cookie with homemade red plum jam, and I am on the third day of making this freaking cookie, wondering why the recipe does not work,” Hall says. “So I tell my recipe tester, Bonnie Benwick, ‘I’m stumped. I don’t know what’s wrong.’ She said, ‘Just send it to me.’ I sent it to her. She said, ‘It’s the peanut butter.’ Dorie Greenspan says you cannot use natural peanut butter in baking. You have to use the commercial stuff.”
Hall adds that it’s the stabilizers in commercial brands that keep the oil from separating. “It’s like using butter that isn’t cold in your cookies, and you’re wondering why your cookies are running all over the place.”
She brings her grandmother’s culinary influences into her recipes.
When asked about the food traditions from her own family that have made an impact, Hall immediately mentions her grandmother and her five-flavor pound cake. “In every cookbook I do, I always do some version of a pound cake. In this new book, it is a striped malted vanilla-and-chocolate pound cake.” It’s one way Hall honors those memories.
Her grandmother also made a mean sweet tea. “It has a lot of lemon in it, but her secret ingredient was almond extract. So whenever I use almond extract, I think about my grandmother. A lot of my recipes have almond in them, almond extract, almonds. And it really comes from this deep love of my grandmother’s food.”
Comfort, for her, is a snack cake.
“One bowl and you just mix it up,” she says. “You can throw in a different citrus. You can throw in spices and herbs, and it’s also something that’ll be ready in about 45 minutes. It sits on the counter, and every time you go by, you take a little sliver. I just love a snack cake.” Its simplicity is part of its charm. “Would you make a cake if you could throw everything in the blender and pour it into the pan? Exactly. Right? Another cake I love is the Coconut Cake With Mini Chocolate Chips. It reminds me of an Almond Joy, and I love it.”
Her husband, Matthew Lyons, is her rock.
The two met through Match.com and quickly fell for each other. It wasn’t long after the pair married, in 2006, that he encouraged her to try out for Top Chef, thus launching her career.
“Matthew is my biggest supporter. I wouldn’t have been able to do The Chew without him, because I was living in New York during the week while he was here in D.C., and he was so supportive. And because he was there for me, for my dreams, I [recently] said to him, ‘OK, it’s your turn. What do you wanna do?’ And so he quit his job at the FDA. He has become a yoga and meditation instructor who does sound bathing and healing. It’s just beautiful watching him stand in his authenticity and love and power.”
“We’ve made a lot of decisions together, and once I understood how to become a ‘we,’ our marriage just got better and better and better,” she says. “Twenty years later, I look back and think, ‘Wow, he is my best friend.’”
She learned from her family what it means to age well.
“I’ve always said that I wanted to live until I was 104, because my great-grandmother lived to 103 and I wanted to beat that! But aging well is all about health,” Hall says. “I look at my mom, who has dementia, and physically she is great. She can touch her toes, she can stand up and she has strength. Her mind isn’t there, but her joy is. And I would like to age joyfully, in good health. That is my version of aging well.”
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