America I AM Pass It Down Cookbook (32 page)

Mrs. Jacquelyn Brooks is an honorably discharged military veteran with over 20 years of service. She has been married to her husband, Abraham, for nearly 50 years and has three children and two grandchildren. Hers is a life of faithful constants, and that includes making her grandmother’s sweet potato pie for special occasions. “I often tease my mother about how I can make this pie better than she can, but the truth is I love being in the kitchen with my mother when she makes her sweet potato pies,” she says. “I get an overwhelming feeling of comfort, love, and peace. It’s the smell of homemade pies— there’s nothing like it.” Mrs. Brooks likes to have her sweet potato pie with butter pecan ice cream.

10 medium-size sweet potatoes
2½ sticks sweetened butter, softened
4 cups sugar
8 tablespoons cinnamon
4 eggs
2½ tablespoons nutmeg
2 cans Carnation evaporated milk
2½ tablespoons vanilla extract
4 9-inch frozen piecrusts

Pass It Down TIP

You can easily halve this recipe for only two pies, but Sweet Potato Pies freeze well. Prepare the pies as for baking, but cover well in tin foil or plastic wrap and freeze. Defrost in refrigerator one day before baking, then bake as usual.

Wash sweet potatoes. Place them in a large pot covered with 2 inches of water. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Have a large bowl ready with 2 cups of ice and 3 cups of water. Cook sweet potatoes until fork tender, then drain. Place the cooked sweet potatoes in the ice water 3–5 minutes. Remove from ice water, peel, and mash in a large bowl.

Place sweetened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer or use a large bowl with a hand mixer. Add the butter and 2 tablespoons of the cinnamon and blend well.

Add half of the sweet potato mash to the bowl and continue to blend while slowly adding 1 cup of the sugar. Mix well. When the mixture is thoroughly combined, add the remaining sweet potatoes, eggs, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Slowly add evaporated milk and vanilla extract. Mix 2–3 minutes until batter is smooth and there are no lumps.

Pour the mixture equally between the 4 pie shells. Bake 1½ hours or until the tops are firm when jiggled. Allow pies to cool for 1 hour. Serve with whipped topping or ice cream.

Pass It Down variation:
Substitute ¾ cup of concentrated orange juice for every cup of white sugar and decrease the amount of liquid by three tablespoons. Although canned evaporated milk has the same vitamins and minerals as regular milk, it is high in sugar and can increase the risk for diabetes.

Desmonette Hazly’s Ginger Peach Pie

SERVES 10

Desmonette Hazly learned to cook from her grandmother who watched her and her cousins while their mothers worked. She often enlisted young Desmonette’s help because of how much the child enjoyed being in the kitchen, hearing stories. Later, that love would prove to be a calling as she went on to be a chef and social worker using cooking as a way to outreach into struggling communities. Dr. Hazly’s peach pie and peach pudding recipes are inspired by the bountiful peach trees that blessed her family yard when she was a child.

1 9-inch unbaked piecrust

FILLING

6 fresh, ripe peaches, peeled, pitted, and cut into ½-inch slices
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
½ cup sugar
¼ cup flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, well chilled and cut into cubes

ALMOND CRUMBLE TOPPING

6 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 cup chopped almonds
½ cup flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 450º F.

Make the filling by combining all ingredients. Place in pie shell.

Make the almond crumble topping by combining all ingredients. Mix well.

Top peaches with half of topping and bake at 450º F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350º F and top pie with remainder of the crumb mixture. Bake an additional 30 minutes.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Sandra Chaisson’s Mama’s Homemade Pound Cake

Houston, Texas

MAKES 1 CAKE

Pound cake has been around for several hundred years and is so called because the original recipe called for one pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. It’s lightness came from the air beaten into the batter. Some recipes call for a bit of baking powder. This one from Sandra Chaisson uses buttermilk, a natural leavening agent.

4 sticks butter, salted or unsalted
3 cups sugar, sifted once
6 large eggs
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups cake flour
½ cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Pre-heat oven to 325º F.

In a stand mixer, or large bowl using a hand mixer, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time, making sure they’re well combined after each addition.

Sift together cake flour and salt, and add slowly to butter and egg mixture.

Add buttermilk in a steady stream, adding more as needed to achieve a smooth thick batter. Stir in vanilla extract and stir until just combined.

Pour batter into a greased and floured Bundt cake pan. Bake 1 hour 20 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Grandma Lillie’s Vanilla Butternut Pound Cake

MAKES 1 CAKE

“My favorite memory of my Grandma Lillie’s Vanilla Butternut Pound Cake is when I was a little girl and my grandmother used to be in her small row-house kitchen in Baltimore, Maryland. She would have her gospel music playing on the AM radio and have the back door to the kitchen open to let out the heat,” says Lisa Aikens. “We weren’t allowed in the kitchen when she was cooking the pound cake, but after she finished making the cake batter, Grandma would put some batter in small Dixie cups for me and my brother. She would write down the time she put the cake in the oven and exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes later my definition of cake perfection emerged.”

2 sticks butter, softened
½ cup vegetable shortening
3 cups sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup evaporated milk
2 tablespoons of vanilla butternut flavor

Pass It Down TIP

Baking enthusiasts looking for a non-imitation quality vanilla butternut extract can find it online at
www.kingarthurflour.com/shop
. Use less vanilla butternut if you are using a pure extract.

Place butter, shortening, sugar, and salt together in a stand mixer, or large bowl using a hand mixer. Cream until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.

Add eggs one at a time, mixing until well incorporated after each addition.

Add 1 cup flour and mix until just combined. Add 1/3 cup evaporated milk to batter and mix well. Repeat, alternating flour and milk until they’re completely added to the batter, ending with the flour.

Stir in vanilla butternut flavor by hand, pour into a greased Bundt pan, and place in a cold oven. Turn heat to 325º F and bake 1 hour 45 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Turn cake out onto a cake rack immediately when cake is done. Cool completely before serving.

Gillian Clark’s Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Washington, DC

MAKES 1 CAKE

Chef Gillian says she learned to cook from her father, who was, like her mother, born in Panama. “He was like a superhero in the kitchen to me,” she says. “He was very adventurous with new recipes and yeast doughs. Sunday brunch was a big event at my house. We’d come back from Mass (we were Catholic) and Daddy would have this amazing brunch going. He’d make yeast doughs and all kinds of things. I was in awe of him. He made pineapple upside-down cake a lot.”