Betty Clyde Jones gets the cooking bug about this time of year. She isn’t alone. Jones and a host of Columbus’ good cooks turn their talents toward a single good cause next Tuesday — the 55th annual Country Store Bake Sale at the Stephen D. Lee Home. Doors open at 10 a.m., and it pays not to be late.
“When it sells out, it’s gone,” said Rita Douglass, president of The Association for the Preservation of Antiquities in Columbus and Lowndes County, which presents the Country Store every year. Tables laden with homemade cakes, pies, cookies, candies, breads, cheese straws, jellies, jams and more attract an eager crowd every November. Proceeds benefit the Stephen D. Lee Foundation, which maintains and preserves the home on the National Register of Historic Places. Dollars raised help fund projects such as the home’s new wheelchair ramp.
Jones believes the Lee Home, and the Florence McLeod Hazard Museum housed on its second floor, are significant assets to the city.
“I think it’s wonderful what it’s meant to the community and to our history,” she said. “It’s important to take care of it.”
To that end, she volunteered to bake for the big day. She’ll prepare a favorite dessert, a moist, flavorful prune cake, from a family recipe. It’s a cake her mother enjoyed making, sometimes substituting fig preserves for prunes.
Jones’ interest in cooking can be traced to early years growing up in the small town of Newellton, Louisiana. She cooked with her mother, a home economics teacher, and became active in 4H, raising livestock and honing gardening and cooking skills.
Like many of her classmates, she probably would have ended up attending college in Louisiana, had it not been for her parents’ ties to Northeast Mississippi. Her father had played football at Mississippi State; her mother was an alumna of what is now Mississippi University for Women. Jones became one, too, and Columbus became her home. Here, she married and raised a family.
Jones and her 11-year-old granddaughter, Sarah Douglas Hutchinson, recently teamed up to bake. Sarah Douglas, a Heritage Academy sixth-grader, is developing into a good cook like her grandmother, who is called “Becka” by all the grandchildren. Jones is an able tutor; like her own mother, she once taught home economics.
The cake is simple to make, and “the sauce is wonderful!” Jones said of the sweet topping that can be poured over the whole fresh, warm cake, or reserved and heated to pour over individual slices.
“Cooking brings back such memories of my childhood, beginning with my mother,” she shared. “We had lots of fun together on the farm. … I’m happy I can have a part in instilling a love of cooking in my grandchildren.”
Jones shares the prune cake recipe today, as well as her mother’s pineapple ice box cake recipe. Both are included in the cookbook “After the Harvest,” compiled by the United Methodist Women at Columbus’ First United Methodist Church.
Takes everyone
Douglass and Country Store event chair Katie Waters praise the generous cooks who “stock” the bake sale every year before Thanksgiving.
“It just takes everybody working to make it a success — from those who bake, to those who set up, those who help with the sale, and those customers who come and buy,” Douglass said. “And it’s always delicious!”
The sale typically attracts a line of customers before doors open at 10 a.m. Shoppers may stop by the Lee Home at 316 Seventh St. N. beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday to pick up a number for lining up outside before the sale starts. The Country Store will be open until noon, if items remain, but could close earlier if sold out.
“And Mildred Austin is always so gracious to donate a Thanksgiving centerpiece to be raffled off,” Douglass said. Tickets are $1, available at the sale.
For more Country Store information, contact Douglass at 662-327-3193.
PRUNE CAKE
For the cake:
1 cup Wesson oil
3 eggs
2 cups cake flour, sifted
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup cooked and mashed prunes
1 cup nuts, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon rum flavoring
For the sauce:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon Karo syrup
1/2 stick butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
(Source: Betty Clyde Jones, “After the Harvest” cookbook, First United Methodist Church)
PINEAPPLE ICE BOX CAKE
2 eggs
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon gelatin (soaked in 1/4 cup water)
1 cup crushed pineapple (drained to get 1/2 cup juice)
1 cup sour cream
Vanilla wafers
Pecans, chopped
(Source: Mrs. D.H. Ratcliff, “After the Harvest” cookbook, First United Methodist Church)
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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