March 29, 2024

Lela Foshee’s Recipe for Life

Posted on December 20, 2015 by in Features

Generations of family recipes are tucked inside the pages of Lela Foshee's cookbook.

Generations of family recipes are tucked inside the pages of Lela Foshee’s cookbook.

by Sandra Polizos; photos by Bob Corley

Lela Foshee’s earliest kitchen memories are of “Little Granny” pulling her up to the table as a small child, so she could join the adults in cooking for the Elmore County family.

“We had an old iron stove and my Little Granny would make up the yeast bread and put it in that iron skillet. I was only three-or-four-years-old, barely old enough to remember. But the smell of that bread cooking would just permeate the whole house and everybody couldn’t wait to get into it. In fact, that’s one of the recipes in the book.”

“The book” is Foshee’s first cookbook, “Lela Foshee’s Personal Touch Catering: A Family Tradition,” a retrospective of a life spent cooking and feeding thousands of Alabamians for more than 50 years. The 174 entries – from Miss Pearlie’s Favorite Cornbread to Our Famous Buttermilk Chicken to Great Grandmother’s Lane Cake – reflect recipes handed down through generations and perfected by years of professional catering experience. Foshee’s comments on the history of various recipes and notes related to their preparation are interspersed throughout the collection.

With daughter and business partner Carron Morrow, Foshee's "Personal Touch Catering" has become a household name in the River Region. Morrow was also a long-time food column contributor to Prime.

With daughter and business partner Carron Morrow, Foshee’s “Personal Touch Catering” has become a household name in the River Region. Morrow was also a long-time food column contributor to Prime.

“My recipes are handed-down family recipes. I’ve added a little here, and a pinch of this and a pinch of that at times,” Foshee says. “But then some of them, like my banana nut bread – there must be a hundred recipes to banana nut bread but I tried recipe after recipe and it just wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. So I made up my own and now I’m happy with that.”

Foshee’s Banana Nut Bread is one of Personal Touch Caterer’s best selling items.

Though the octogenarian has been a professional caterer for half a century, her joy in cooking for others began long before that.

“I’d just give people at the church their wedding cakes. You know, I’d make the cake as a gift. I took great pride in doing that for people who couldn’t afford the expense of a wedding.”

  Foshee never considered a career in food preparation until her two daughters married, only a few months apart. “I made the cakes, the dresses, the bridesmaids’ dresses – I really just got in over my head there for a while. But it turned out so wonderfully and everybody was so complimentary.”

Dec2015Foshee5“A photographer there asked me for a business card. When I told him we only did this for friends he said, ‘You really need to do it as a business and you need to name your place The Personal Touch because you just go all out.’ And that’s how we got started.”

Over the years, Foshee and her daughter Carron Morrow say they’ve cooked and catered for every governor since George Wallace, and prepared food for a long and varied list of celebrities – from Reba McEntire to Ozzy Osbourne.

“Hank Williams, Jr. even wanted to take us on the road,” Morrow says, with a wink and a grin.

Of all the meals prepared by the family owned-and-operated business, Foshee says the fried chicken is probably the most well-known and a perennial favorite. Her own favorite recipe?

“My dressing at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Because I boil my chickens and I don’t use any croutons. None of that stuff. With just a couple of small changes, I make the same recipe that my mother made when I was growing up. And I helped her make just pans and pans of that dressing because she wanted all the shuts-ins and the older people to eat well, you know. She wanted them to have something nice for the holidays.”

At 85, Lela Foshee seems satisfied. She still loves to cook, saying it’s a gift from God. “If you enjoy what you’re doing it’s not work. You get tired, but you enjoy it. And you can just continually be blessing somebody else’s life with cooking, with food.  I’ve got wonderful children and grandchildren and all the friends that we’ve made in the catering business. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. I’ve had a great life.”

Lela’s Homemade Red Velvet Cake

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1-1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1-2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon butter flavoring

3 tablespoons red food coloring

2-1/2 cups White Lily Self Rising Flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

On medium speed mix oil, eggs and sugar until yellow and fluffy.

In a bowl, add all dry ingredients together: flour, soda, cocoa powder; mix well.

Pour dry ingredients into the egg and oil mixture. Add buttermilk, vinegar, flavoring and food color. Mix until completely blended.

Pour cake into two 9-inch greased and floured pans and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean. When the cakes come out of the oven, turn the cakes onto cake boards and cool. Frost when the cake is completely cool with Cream Cheese Icing.

Cream Cheese Icing

2-8 ounce packages cream cheese

1 cup real butter, soft

1-16 ounce package confectioner’s sugar, sifted

1 cup finely chopped pecans (optional)

1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Beat the cream cheese and butter together in a mixing bowl on high until icing is fluffy. Scape the bowl with a rubber spatula and mix again until all is well-mixed. Gradually add in the confectioner’s sugar on medium speed.

Lastly, add the vanilla and blend well. Frost your cake and enjoy.

Coconut Cake with Seven Minute Frosting

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1 cup butter

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

3 cups White Lily Plain or All Purpose Flour

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time until they are well-beaten.

Add, alternately, butter, sugar, and eggs until well-mixed. Add vanilla and mix well. Pour the mixture into two 9-inch, greased and floured pans. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until the cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan from 8-10 minutes. Turn the cakes on to cake racks until cool, then ice with Seven Minute Frosting.

Seven Minute Frosting

There is no substitute frosting for this moist cake. Sometimes I juice an orange and pour the juice over the layers before icing. Get your timer out. I admit that seven minutes with a steady hand over boiling water is a sacrifice for your family, but I promise you will be happy you lasted the seven minutes.

1 tablespoon water

3 egg whites (no yolk residue)

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1-2/3 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup white corn syrup (we love Karo)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups shredded, frozen coconut

Allow 1/4 pan of water to boil in the bottom half of a double boiler. Place the top boiler over this hot water and mix all of the ingredients with a hand mixer in the top boiler for SEVEN MINUTES.  Peaks of frosting will begin forming into a light, white cloud of icing. After seven minutes take the top pan from the boiler and begin icing your cooled cake.

If your cake is thick enough, we enjoy splitting each layer very carefully with a cake board between each piece. This gives your cake four, thin layers with this wonderful frosting.

Moisten your coconut with a teaspoon of milk if not already moist enough for your liking.

Buttermilk Pound Cake

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1-1/4 cup Crisco

6 eggs

3 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon lemon extract

1 teaspoon orange extract

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1-1/4 cup of buttermilk

3 cups all purpose flour

Cream the Crisco, sugar and eggs until very creamy. Add extracts, milk and soda. Mix well. Slowly add flour and mix well with your mixer on medium speed for about two minutes.

Bake in a well-greased and floured tube pan at 350 degrees for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.

This is a great cake. I have made several of these in a day. They freeze easily. Therefore, bake enough to keep on hand for special occasions. Your friends will think you worked and slaved over a stove all day!

To freeze: Cool the cake and place in a large freezer bag so that it does not get freezer burn. Definitely never freeze a cake in foil. The cake will pick up that frozen, undesirable taste.

The cake recipes featured in this article are reprinted with permission from Lela Foshee. These and other recipes may be found in Lela Foshee’s Personal Touch Catering: A Family Cookbook Tradition, available through Amazon or by mail: Personal Touch Cookbook, 9920 Wares Ferry Road, Montgomery, AL 36117. For more information, email carronmorrow@bellsouth.net.

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