Gail Baker

Gail Baker of Banner is a sweet eater and a sweet maker. Chocolate is a favorite, especially brownies, but she also likes pecan pie.

Her mother, the late Katherine Smith, made good pecan pies, and Gail says she can’t get her filling right, but she does make the mini ones. She thinks with a lot of recipes you have to make them often to learn how to make them. She always helped in the kitchen and did learn to cook from her mother, who did “old fashioned cooking”–vegetables and cornbread. Growing up, they would have things like candied sweet potatoes and casseroles for church dinners that they didn’t usually have at home. Stuffed bell peppers were one thing her mother made especially for her.
Gail started making candy at Christmas for gifts, and then her family began to expect it. She says she doesn’t do much baking for Christmas, just makes candy, but also makes the Greek Snowballs and Mini Fruitcakes, a tradition she started several years ago. Another holiday tradition is a sweet and sour pork dish, which she serves over rice, saying you can use pork chops or tenderloin. After marinating in soy sauce and cornstarch, brown the meat, then add pineapple, cinnamon, a bay leaf and simmer.

She and daughter-in-law, Traci, share a lot of recipes and do some cooking together. When Chad and Traci married, Gail made her a cookbook of his favorites and “all the different ways you can use hamburger meat!”
For the Mt. Comfort Baptist Church monthly business meeting a supper meal is always served and for it she almost always makes a dessert. They serve finger foods when their drama team performs and for that event she always makes cornflake candy or teacakes, which is a favorite there. The teacake recipe is from her grandfather, who really didn’t cook anything else that she can recall. The history of the cornflake candy recipe is from her mother, who worked in a school cafeteria.

She has had the red velvet cake recipe over 40 years, and it is a favorite of her niece, Jacque Russell. The Greek Snowball recipe came from a great aunt in Arizona, who would ship them home to her grandmother for the holidays, and a  friend of her mother’s shared the coconut pie recipe.
Gail likes cookbooks “from around here that contain recipes of people you know,” and she is not big on those with “steps and steps.”

Greek Snowballs
1/2 lb. sweet unsalted butter
1 cup finely ground pecans or almonds
6 Tbsp. regular sugar
2 cups sifted plain flour
Powdered sugar
Beat butter 10-15 minutes with electric beater. Add regular sugar gradually, then the flour, then the nuts. Keep speed on 1 or 2. Form into balls. Bake at 350° on ungreased cookie sheet about 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and roll in powdered sugar. These will keep 3-4 weeks.

Coconut Pie
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup self-rising flour
2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix flour and sugar and beaten eggs, milk and vanilla. Melt butter in deep pie dish. Pour melted butter into mixture and add coconut. Mix well and pour in the buttered pie dish. Bake at 300° for one hour.

Mini Fruitcakes
1 lb. candied cherries (1/2 red, 1/2 green)
3 slices candied pineapple (1/4 lb.)
1 lb. chopped dates
2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup real butter, softened
Mix fruit, flour and nuts to coat. Add sugar and salt. Add eggs and softened butter. MIX BY HAND.  Fill paper-lined mini tart cups full–it will not rise. Bake at 325° for 20 minutes. Makes 5 dozen.

Red Velvet Cake
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil
1 bottle red food coloring
2 1/2 cups plain flour
Dash of salt
1 tsp. cocoa
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla flavoring
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. vinegar
Cream sugar and oil. Add food coloring, vanilla and eggs. Mix well. Sift flour, cocoa and salt together. Add flour mixture and  milk to creamed mixture, a little at a time. Mix soda and vinegar together (this will foam up) and add to  cake batter. Grease and flour three 8” cake pans. Divide batter evenly in pans and bake at 350° for 30 minutes.
Frosting:
1 box powdered sugar
1-8 oz. cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1 stick margarine, softened to room temperature
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
Mix well and frost cake.