Reader granted Strongbow’s carrot cake recipe with ‘Gilligan’s Island’ nod
Actress Dawn Wells was always good-natured about her association with the CBS silly series “Gilligan’s Island.”
As featured in my published cookbooks, much like her TV alterego Mary Ann Summers, “a farm girl from Kansas,” Wells loved to cook and create recipes. We lost
Dawn at age 82 in December 2020 but her smile lives on forever in the viewership world of television reruns.
Because today’s column helps answer a reader’s request for a treasured restaurant carrot cake recipe, my thoughts floated to the desert island where Wells and her famed co-stars were stranded for 98 episodes spanning three seasons from 1964 to 1967, before countless reruns in syndication, which is where I discovered it after my birth in 1970. Our mother, probably like so many other moms, disliked the show and found the entire plot premise goofy, which of course, was all the more reason myself and my older siblings found it so entertaining.
My favorite episode,
No. 71 as part of the third season, titled “Pass the Vegetables, Please,” originally aired on Sept. 26, 1966.
During the few times I interviewed Dawn, we always chuckled about this zany episode plot, which detailed a wooden crate of assorted vegetable seed packets, hooked by Gilligan’s fishing line, hailed as a celebration for the stranded castaways, who tired of their usual tropical fruit menu. Unfortunately, Gilligan removed the crate lid to make a new bench and failed to notice it was stamped with the warning: “Radioactive!”
Because Mary Ann is the farming expert of the bunch, she advises using beach sand to thin the tropical soil for the vegetable garden, and
these planted seeds not only sprout overnight, but they yield an abundant, however, also strange looking harvest within 24 hours.
“Everyone knows carrots are good for you, since after all, have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?” Gilligan explains.
Every castaway has his or her own favorite veggie.
The Skipper loves sweet corn, but is shocked to see the ears of corn growing in a ring-shape design. Movie star Ginger loves string beans but is perplexed that these seeds result in pretzel-shaped beans. And Mary Ann’s favored carrots yield four or five adjoined orange roots per carrot, prompting her to comment: “I’ve never seen anything like this on the farm…except under a cow!” (At first, the Professor thinks the ocean salt water is the cause for the abnormalities of the vegetables’ appearance.)
Once the castaways start eating their favorite veggies, they also discover they contain nutrients providing super-human properties.
Gilligan consuming spinach gives him incredible strength. Mrs. Howell’s gorging on sugar beets provides super-sonic energy.
And Mary Ann’s carrot consumption gives incredible eyesight, such as the ability to see ships crossing the ocean, though they are many, many miles off the coast and not visible to anyone else. (We never learn what the result is from Mr. Howell devouring his mushrooms and artichokes.)
Once the castaways hear a news report on their transistor radio about the missing crate containing dangerous radioactive seeds, the Professor concludes the only way to counteract the radiation is the distasteful course of eating their homemade bars of soap “for the soap hydrocarbons to neutralize the radioactivity.” (The
plate filled with prop “bars of soap” in reality had stacked blocks of cheese the cast ate while making faces before trick-shot bubbles emerged from their mouths.)
It was reader Tara Garrett of Munster who contacted me last month to help her find the recipe for the carrot cake served at Strongbow Inn restaurant in Valparaiso, which closed in March 2015 after 75 years of serving guests turkey with all the trimmings, and so much menu more.
“My mother has been on the hunt for this cake recipe for years, and after not having any luck, I told her we needed to contact you for help on this search,” Garrett said.
In perusing my archive file of recipes, I found a story clipping from January 2005 featuring Chef Russ Adams and wife Nancy Adams, Strongbow owners, and the latter as head of the bakery operation, discussing this carrot cake recipe.
“We’ve always had carrot cake available but we never sold a lot, but then we changed the recipe and it’s been flying off the shelf,” said Nancy in the story, describing how she developed the recipe, which includes a standard cream cheese frosting garnished with toasted pecans.
“Everything is made from scratch and customers know. That’s how I know we sell a lot of cakes. Because I’m always grating carrots.”
Chef Russ kindly provided me with his handwritten recipe for the delectable three-layer Strongbow Inn carrot cake, which I’m happy to share for Tara, her mom and other eager readers.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs. org or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.