5 minute read
Taste Arkansas
Home Cooking:
ANITA’S SPECIAL CHOCOLATE CAKE Photos by Ashley Wallace By Keith Sutton
Taste Arkansas I
Anita Vandiver grew up with her seven siblings in a quaint 950-square-foot home situated in a St. Francis County cotton field. Her parents, James and Lola Ethridge, moved the family to another house when Anita was just a teen, but the original five-room dwelling — two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom — remained on the property near Colt.
“For a long time, it was used as a rent house,” Anita says. “Then, in 2009, the owner told my husband and I he was going to tear it down. If we wanted to come see it one more time, we needed to do so because it would soon be gone.”
That old house place had a lot of sentimental value to Anita. Her father had farmed cotton there while keeping a full-time job in Forrest City, and her mother had raised eight kids within the little home’s walls, cooking every meal for them while also growing a garden and canning the produce they harvested. “When we went out and looked at it for what we thought would be the final time, I realized it was still a very solid little house,” Anita remembers. “When I got home, I asked my husband if he would consider moving it to our son Kevin’s farm on Crowley’s Ridge. He thought that was a great idea, so we hired a house-moving company and had it moved to its current location off Highway 284. It’s now part of Vandiver’s Newcastle Farms, a place where friends and family can stay when they visit Kevin and his wife Jenny, and a place where I can do my baking and canning.”
During the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, most folks visit the farm to buy one of the Christmas trees Kevin grows there. But most will also go home with some of Anita’s baked or canned goods, which are made in the old family home and sold in the farm store. The food items are branded “Lola’s Table” in honor of Anita’s late mother, whom she credits with all her cooking skills.
“It’s so comforting to be there and do all my cooking in the same little kitchen where my mother cooked,” says Anita. “I started baking bread to help with a fundraiser at church more than 40 years ago. That’s one way I learned, and I still cook for a lot of different organizations.”
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Cake: 1¾ cups all-purpose flour 2 cups sugar ¾ cup cocoa 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup buttermilk, shaken ½ cup vegetable oil 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla 1 cup brewed hot coffee
Frosting: 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate 2 sticks butter (room temperature) 1 egg yolk (room temperature) 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 ¼ cup powdered sugar
Cake Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour three 8-inch round pans. Sift dry ingredients into the bowl of an electric mixer. In another bowl, combine buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the liquids to the dry ingredients. Keep your mixer on low and add the hot coffee and mix just to combine. Scrape the bowl of the mixer to make sure all the ingredients are well mixed. Pour into your pans and bake 35 minutes.
Frosting: Chop the chocolate and place in a pan over simmering water. Stir until just melted and set aside to cool to room temperature. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium-high until light yellow and fluffy (about three minutes). Add the egg yolk and vanilla, and beat three more minutes. With the mixer on low, gradually add the sugar and beat on medium until smooth. Add chocolate. Spread on the chocolate cake.
When we visited Anita, Kevin and the rest of the family during their holiday business season, she shared several recipes with us, but we particularly liked her delicious made-from-scratch chocolate cake. Give it a try for your next birthday or special event. To learn more about Vandiver’s Newcastle Farms, visit https://newcastlefarms.com/. To learn more about Anita’s story and more recipes, visit TasteArkansas.com. •
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