Reader’s recipe has 50-year history
Evelyn LaHaie, the Gary talent producer who the Jackson family acknowledges as the clever showbiz promoter who named their group the Jackson Five, has talents that also extend beyond the stage curtain and into the kitchen.
Over the years, LaHaie, who now lives in Hobart and spent the 1960s as the producer of shows at Gary Music Theatre, has been a favorite name in my columns. Today, we also count her as treasured friend of the family, especially for my parents, Chester and Peggy.
While sorting through files recently, LaHaie found a clipping of a cake recipe she made as a holiday surprise in December 1969 for the features department at the PostTribune. At that time, she said the features department, responsible for reporting society news, showbiz and celebrity tidbits, gardening, recipes and fashion in the newspaper’s feature sections, was called the “Women’s News Department.”
“Now that it’s the end of the year and we are about to welcome 2020, I thought you and your readers at the Tribune might enjoy this look back in time,” LaHaie said.
“My carrot cake recipe is still just as delicious now as it was half a century ago when I baked if for the newsroom employees to enjoy. At the time, your predecessor for reporting about recipes and cooking news at the Gary Post-Tribune was Janet Burton, and she loved the Christmas cake I decorated so much, she had it photographed and wrote about it in the newspaper.”
Burton’s story, preserved for 50 years in Evelyn’s recipe file scrapbook describes the delicious cake and the clever details of the decorations:
“Mrs. Evelyn LaHahie loves to decorate cakes and uses any holiday or special occasion as an excuse to bake and decorate.
Her Christmas cake is topped with a small village, a bridge, a tiny snowman sentinel and tiny trees. As an added attraction, she used red and white striped straws to hold tiny pipe cleaner Santas aloft bearing a banner with the wishes for the season.
The cake is a delicious, moist carrot cake, a recipe she has used on many occasions, the latest, as her entry for the Mrs. Indiana competition.
For her decorations, she uses a pound cake cut into chunks as the cottages and clock tower in the frosting snow covered village. Colorful plastic toothpicks are the railing of the footbridge, the latter which is created from a rounded crust of a loaf of bread. A small stream made of colored sugar flows under the bridge. The windows and doors of the cottages are made with toothpicks dipped in food coloring to carefully paint on these details. Mrs. LaHaie uses the golden brown edges and bottom of the pound cake to create the roofs of the houses. The snowman is made with more frosting, rolled in powdered sugar, and his features are carefully “painted on” with toothpicks dipped in food coloring. The finished results makes an attractive centerpiece for the holidays, and after, the cake makes delicious eating.”
In my just published fourth cookbook, “Back From the Farm: Family Recipes and Memories of a Lifetime” ($34.95 Pediment Press 2019), Evelyn shared her delicious recipe for her unique watermelon pie.
“Recipes and memories always go together, which is why it’s so important to share anything in your own kitchen that is a cooking or baking favorite rather than keep it a secret,” she said.
“I know editor Janet already shared my carrot cake recipe back in 1969, but I’m hoping you’ll want to share the recipe again with readers for the new year.”
Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. Mail questions to: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, Indiana 46374.
Evelyn’s carrot cake
Cake:
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup cooking oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
2 1⁄ 4 cups sifted flour
1⁄ 2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped pecans
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1⁄ cups freshly grated carrots
4 1⁄ cup raisins
2
Frosting:
2 pounds confectioners sugar 1⁄ cup almost boiling water
2
1 cup shortening
1 tablespoon white corn syrup
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl,
mix together sugar, eggs, oil, salt, vanilla and cinnamon for 4 minutes or until combined.
Add flour,
baking powder, baking soda, carrots, raisins and pecans to batter, mixing well to combine.
Pour batter
into 2 greased and floured 9-inch round layer cake pans and bake for 35-40 minutes or until center of cake “bounces back” when touched lightly in the center.
Remove cake
from oven and allow layers to cool.
To make frosting,
combined all ingredients and mix with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy.
Frost cake
and assemble layers. Extra frosting can be used for the “snowy” effect on the tiny cake houses, trees and to create a snowman.
Use a purchases plain pound cake
to create tiny cottages in village as caking topping and decorate as desired with assorted food coloring for details.
Makes 12 servings.