Festive Foods for the Holidays

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The authors of our ‘Flavors’ column celebrate the foodiest time of the year with a collection of great tastes and experiences, beginning with ‘a recipe worth the trouble.’

Homeroom teachers hold an exalted place in our past. At Hiltons Elementary School in Scott County, Virginia, and EastView Elementary in Greeneville, Tennessee, these ladies made sure our days began with smiles and encouragement. Come holiday time, they deserved something extra special.

And nothing expressed our gratitude any better than a tray of peanut butter pinwheels—snowy white, beautifully patterned, and handmade.

The late Elsie Maddux Derting (our mother and mother-in-law who died in January of 2022 at age 98) made them every December, well into her 90s. In fact, throughout the valley at the foot of Clinch Mountain where she lived, they were her trademark. And she could make them, somehow, without creating a snowfall of powdered sugar in her kitchen.

Carla Barger Spivey’s late mother, Nancy Barger, of Scott County, made them, too. Late in the summer of 2022, we compared our two inherited recipes, mixed in some memories, and added some cooking tips to come up with this version of peanut butter pinwheels so that our readers can replicate this holiday confection.

Admittedly, as Spivey says, the recipe can test your patience. It can indeed be messy, but Spivey is a peanut butter pinwheel whiz who makes 15 to 20 batches a season. She says even though this is essentially a divinity candy recipe, it will even work on rainy days in her kitchen near the Yuma community in Southwest Virginia. Some recipes call for potatoes, but this one does not. When Spivey offers what she calls peanut butter rolls for sale, she says people come out of the woodwork to buy them.

Peanut Butter Pinwheels or Rolls

Recipe courtesy Carla Barger Spivey and Elsie Maddux Derting, Scott County, Virginia

Recipe:

  • 2 ½ cups white sugar
  • 2/3 cup light corn syrup
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 2 egg whites
  • Powdered sugar—about 3 cups total1 ½ to 2 cups creamy peanut butter (Because of its spreadable consistency, Jif is the preferred brand)
  1.  Mix sugar, corn syrup, and water in a medium-sized saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and allow the mixture to continue to boil, stirring constantly until a candy thermometer reads 250 degrees.
  2.  Beat egg whites, preferably in a stand mixer, until stiff peaks form. A stand mixer will keep your hands free so that you can beat the whites while stirring the sugar, corn syrup, and water. And the more powerful the mixer, the better.
  3.  After the syrup mixture is cooked to the correct temperature, slowly pour it into the egg whites with the beater turned on high speed. Beat on high for 4 to 5 minutes until thickened. Add up to ½ cup of powdered sugar and mix until it is blended in thoroughly. When you lift the beater up, the mixture should be thick enough so that it does not run off the beater and also thick enough to roll out.
  4.  On a large pastry mat, sift powdered sugar heavily into a large rectangular shape. Your rectangle of powdered sugar should be roughly 13 x 9 inches.
  5.  Spoon out 1/3 of the “divinity” mixture over the powdered sugar and pat it out into a rectangular shape as well. Add a little powdered sugar as needed to keep it from sticking. Gently roll it out to about ¼-inch thickness.
  6.  Using an offset spatula, spread a thin layer of peanut butter on top of the divinity. Don’t spread it too thick, because if you do, it will ooze out when you cut the roll.
  7.  From one of the two longer edges, lift up the pastry mat to get the rolling started. Then gently roll the divinity into a log. Wrap the log in waxed paper. Repeat with the remaining divinity until you have three logs.
  8.  Refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes to make slicing easier. Slice into ½-inch pinwheels, wiping the knife down after each slice.
  9.  This recipe will make approximately 50 to 60 pinwheels. Stored in an airtight container, they should keep for a week or more.

Tips: 

  • Reaching the correct temperature is critical to this recipe. If you undercook the mixture, it will be too soft to roll out well. Overcooked, it will be too dry and will crack when rolled.
  • When rolling out the divinity, be careful not to “dig” or roll too hard. It will be moist on the inside and will tear easily. Always cover your rolling pin with powdered sugar and add a very light layer of sifted powdered sugar on top of the divinity before you roll it. Roll gently and slowly. Patience at this step is very important.
  • If you do not have a pastry mat, you can use parchment or waxed paper.  

A Spartan Symbol of Joy

Another of Appalachia’s most treasured holiday treats is pure sugar stick candy, in the unforgettable stark white box striped in red.

The peppermint-flavored sticks are sweet links to the past. A mention of them in almost any situation elicits stories of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and detailed memories of their candy jars.

Pure sugar stick candy brightened life in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. In impoverished sections of Appalachia, boxes of Red Band candy, or even just a few sticks, may have been the only presents children received for Christmas.

While the twin cities of Bristol, Tennessee, and Bristol, Virginia, have come to be known for racing and country music, the role of candy-making in their history should never be forgotten.

At one time, the two Bristols were home to some 10 candy companies, all of them making versions of pure sugar stick candy. Over the years, their buildings and businesses were either acquired or abandoned.

But on the Lee Highway, on the Virginia side, Helms Candy Company is thriving, with 14 full-time employees. It’s a fourth-generation family business, and the core of that business is still peppermint-flavored pure sugar stick candy.

Helms traces its origins to 1909 when Frank Helms Sr. opened Bristol Wholesale Grocery, saw a need for a line of candy, and started making his own.

His great-grandson, George F. “Buzz” Helms IV, runs the company today, along with his brother Mark and sister Debby Smith. Their father, George F. Helms III, died in 2020 at age 90.

Buzz Helms believes his family’s candy company is the oldest manufacturing facility in Bristol.

We asked Helms why Bristol became the undeniable epicenter of pure sugar stick candy making in America.

“The elevation is just right for cooking the candy,” he answered. “We’re not in the lowlands, and we don’t have tremendous humidity. We’re close to population centers and had good railroad facilities. And we’ve had a good, willing labor force.”

Helms says cooking the candy is still an old craft and a very simple one. “The ingredients are sugar, cream of tartar, flavor, and color. It’s made by boiling with water, then it’s cooled and pulled like taffy, which is where the white comes from, the air. Then we stripe it.”

When the candy is poured from a copper kettle onto a slab that is heated to around 275 degrees, it is amber in color. The humidity of the room is under constant watch, ensuring that the final product won’t become sticky.

In 1976, Helms purchased Loudy Candy Company, a business started by the late Frank Loudy at a time in the 1940s when sugar was being rationed in America. The little boy in neon lights that sits atop the Helms building on Lee Highway was Loudy’s creation. In 2005, Helms acquired competitor Moretz Candy and its Red Band label. Helms also sells candy under the Virginia Beauty label.

Peppermint is still by far the best-selling flavor. But, like the world of barbecue, there are regional variations in stick candy taste.

“Down in Georgia, clove is number two to peppermint,” Helms tells us. “They like those bright flavors down there, the spicier flavors. In Kentucky, they like cream stick, which is a vanilla. And in Kentucky and Tennessee, horehound is still big.”

Horehound is a perennial herb, and Helms describes it as “an acquired taste.” In the Helms family files is a letter their great-grandfather wrote to a broker in Kentucky in 1951, predicting the demise of horehound candy because of aging demographics.

“That was over 70 years ago, and we’re still making it like crazy,” Buzz adds. “People make cough syrup with it.”

Pure sugar stick candy gets even better as it ages. “When it’s first made, it’s really hard,” Helms says. “Then it goes through a sweating and graining process. We’ll start making candy for next Christmas right after this Christmas, and it sits in the warehouse and gets softer.”

Helms describes pure sugar stick candy as “an incredibly stable product, with nothing in it that will go bad.” Candy that is as much as three years old or even more is still good.

In addition to eating them right out of the box or candy dish, some people use the porous sticks as straws, plunging them down into oranges to drink the juice. And crumbled peppermint sticks are often used as a topping for holiday cakes. The best source we have found for all the many flavors of Helms pure sugar stick candy is the Ben Franklin store in Kingsport, Tennessee.

After witnessing the daily ritual of making pure sugar stick candy once again, we asked Helms about the challenges in keeping the business going for all these years.

“It’s a tall order with the economy. Think of how many wars my family has lasted through, and presidencies, depressions, and recessions. We’ve kept trudging through all that. It’s a huge responsibility to keep it going.”

 As Much a Part of Knoxville as the Sunsphere

Continuing the sweet theme, we believe Knoxville, Tennessee, is the red velvet cake capital of the world, thanks to the influence of The Regas Restaurant, which opened in 1919 and permanently closed at the end of 2010. It was one of Tennessee’s oldest restaurants, and its closure was a sad day in the state’s restaurant history. Missing The Regas is a common theme still today when you talk food with diners around East Tennessee and beyond.

Greek immigrants Frank and George Regas opened the place on Gay Street in Knoxville, first as a stool-and-counter establishment. The Regas eventually grew from 50-cent sizzling steaks and blue-plate specials to white tablecloths and wine lists. Frank’s son Bill Regas, who died in 2021, once told us his favorite meal at the restaurant was a 9-ounce New Zealand lobster tail and a 6-ounce mesquite-grilled filet.

At The Regas, a meal-ending piece of red velvet cake was obligatory. When The Regas was open 24 hours a day, Bobbie Wynn, the night manager, baked German chocolate, lemon pound and Italian marble cakes after midnight. But it was her red velvet recipe that became a Regas trademark and party finale, a light chocolate cake topped with buttercream icing and scattered with red-colored coconut flakes.

This is Bobbie Wynn’s recipe, as shared with the late Louise Durman, who for many years was the food writer for the Knoxville News Sentinel. This is the cake that helped define a city.

Red Velvet Cake

Cake Recipe:

  • 1 cup butter (or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup solid shortening)
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 1/2 cups White Lily all-purpose flour 
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 4 tablespoons cocoa
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 4 to 5 tablespoons red food coloring 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour three 9-inch cake pans. Beat together butter, shortening, if used, and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Combine flour, soda, salt, and cocoa and gradually add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk. Add vanilla and food coloring. Blend well. Pour into prepared cake pans. Bake approximately 25-30 minutes or until cake tests done. Let cool 10 minutes; remove from pans and cool layers.

Frosting Recipe:

  • 1 (16-ounce) package confectioners sugar, sifted
  • 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 4 tablespoons whipping cream
  • Red food coloring
  • One-half cup shredded coconut

Blend confectioners sugar, butter or margarine, vanilla, and whipping cream, beating with mixer until smooth and fluffy. Additional cream may be needed to achieve fluffy consistency. Spread mixture on cooled layers and top of cake. (Sides are not frosted.) Sprinkle top with coconut tinted with red food coloring.

Early Morning Chocolate

When we first wrote about a dish called chocolate gravy, it was relatively obscure and unknown, but recently, it has become more commonplace. Once purely a home-cooked product, it’s now available in jars and mixes. In cook’s terms, chocolate gravy is a béchamel sauce with cocoa. This recipe comes from the kitchen of Mildred Dearstone, in the Ottway community of Greene County, Tennessee. She and her family made double boilers full of chocolate gravy every Christmas.

As for the origins of chocolate gravy, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America theorizes that it may have been an offshoot of a trading network between Spanish Louisiana and the Tennessee Valley, bringing “Mexican-style breakfast chocolate to the Appalachians.”

The encyclopedia even suggests that chocolate gravy could have been preserved from Spanish colonies on the East Coast in the 16th and 17th centuries by the mixed-race ethnic group known as the Melungeons.

Our guess is it came about when Hershey’s Cocoa first started appearing on shelves of country stores and cooks devised ways to make main meals, not just desserts, using the precious powder in the brown, silver-topped can.

Recipe:

  • 1 cup sugar (Mildred says maybe even 1 ½ cups)
  • 3 tablespoons cocoa
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 tablespoons flour
  • 3 cups milk
  • 3 tablespoons margarine
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix dry ingredients. Add enough milk to make a paste, then the remainder of milk and margarine, in a heavy saucepan. Turn heat on medium and stir until thickened. Add vanilla before removing from heat. If too thick, add more milk or water. Serve over hot biscuits.

The Allure of Apricots 

Mary Nelle Graves (Fred’s aunt) could set a beautiful table. She understood that color plays just as important a role in a successful meal as taste. When she served this pie to us for lunch in her home in Athens, Tennessee, we thought it was the best pie we had ever eaten—foamy, fruity, warm with fall season spices, and a stunning light orange color. We have never come across one quite like it, before or since. It’s perfect for the holiday table.

Pie Crust Recipe (for 1 Crust):

  • 1 ¼ cups flour
  • 6 tablespoons shortening
  • ¼ cup water
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon cloves or nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Cut shortening into flour until flour looks like little pellets. Add all other ingredients and mix well. Roll out on floured surface to fit the size of a 9-inch pie pan. Place in pie pan and prick all over with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned—15-20 minutes, depending on oven, and allowing longer for a glass pie plate. Remove from oven and cool.

Filling (Enough for 2 Pies):

  • 1 pound dried apricots (the ones purchased in a sealed bag on the shelf cook up faster and better than the ones purchased in bulk or produce sections)
  • 1 cup pineapple juice
  • 5 egg whites
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup sugar

Cook apricots in pineapple juice until very soft; put through a fine sieve or, better yet, a Foley Food Mill; cool. Beat egg whites and salt until stiff; gradually beat in sugar. Carefully fold into apricot pulp until well blended. Pour into baked pie shells and bake in slow oven (250-275 degrees) for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Serves 6 (or 8 smaller servings) per pie. 

An Eggnog from Eastern Kentucky

Our friends call this an eggnog “to eat or drink.” It is thick enough to eat with a spoon. It has been the centerpiece of many parties in Jonesborough, the oldest town in Tennessee. This eggnog is a specialty of Dr. Joe Florence, who was given the recipe by a colleague when he practiced medicine in Eastern Kentucky. (Consult standard cautions in use of raw eggs.)

Eggnog to Eat or Drink

Recipe: 

  • 6 eggs at room temperature
  • ¾ cup sugar, divided
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 pint half-and-half or whipping cream
  • Whole milk
  • Half gallon vanilla ice cream
  • Freshly grated nutmeg to taste
  • Rum or bourbon to taste

Beat egg yolks with ½ cup sugar. Add vanilla, half-and-half, and enough milk to make 1 ½ quarts of liquid. Beat egg whites and ¼ cup sugar until stiff. Fold egg white mixture into milk mixture and add the ice cream. Guests can add nutmeg and rum or a good shot of Kentucky bourbon to suit their individual tastes.

It Takes a Rock

The late Wanda Sauceman (Fred’s mother) made this red-colored salad every Christmas. Oftentimes she used black walnuts in the recipe, ones she had saved from the trees that grew in her yard. She had a special rock, with a drilled-out indentation, that she used solely for cracking the nuts, and we still own that rock today.

Cranberry Salad

Recipe: 

  • 1 12-ounce package cranberries, washed and drained
  • 1 3-ounce package orange jello
  • 1 3-ounce package lemon jello
  • 2 cups boiling water 
  • 2 medium red apples, unpeeled
  • 2 oranges, membrane removed
  • Grated orange peel
  • 1 ¾ to 2 cups sugar
  • Red food coloring
  • 1 cup chopped nuts, such as pecans or black walnuts

Dissolve jello in boiling water. Set aside but stir once in a while. Grind cranberries and apples in a food processor and discard excess liquid. Add orange pieces, peel, and sugar. Stir well. Add red food coloring after combining 2 mixtures when jello is cooled. Add part of nuts, saving balance to sprinkle on top. Chill. Some people like a dollop of mayonnaise on top of this cranberry salad. 

The Current State of Sausage

On the savory side, we think it’s hard to top a Sausage Breakfast Casserole on Christmas morning. It’s definitely a make-ahead dish, ready to be baked as you’re preparing to open presents or working on other dishes to serve later in the day. Tennessee is a sausage state, with a number of fine producers including Swaggerty’s, a Kodak, Tennessee, company that has been in existence since 1930. Versions of this casserole made the rounds in the 1970s and ’80s.  In 1980, the Youth Builders organization in Greeneville, Tennessee, included a recipe for one called “Breakfast on a Cloud” in its spiral-bound cookbook, Main Street. Here is the recipe we have used since the early 1980s. It lends itself to endless variations. Ham can be substituted for sausage. Sautéed onions and green peppers or even jarred red pimentos can be added. Sautéed mushrooms work well, too. If it’s Christmas Eve and you don’t want to take a trip to the store for cheddar, just about any kind of cheese will work. And lately, we’ve started experimenting with the bread and love this casserole made with either brioche, croissants or challah. You can easily make half the recipe, and in that case, don’t worry about 2 ½ eggs. Go ahead and use three. This is often called a breakfast “strata.”

Sausage Breakfast Casserole

Recipe:

  • 1 pound sausage
  • 3 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 6 slices Texas toast, crusts removed
  • 1 ½ cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
  • 5 eggs 
  • 2 cups half-and-half
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon dry mustard 

Cook sausage until crumbly and drain on a paper towel.  Brush melted butter on both sides of bread.  Then cut the bread into small cubes.  Lightly grease a 13 x 9 x 2-inch casserole dish.  Place the bread cubes in the dish, sprinkle with the sausage, and top with the cheese.  Beat the eggs well and mix with the half-and-half.  Add the salt and dry mustard.  Since the dry mustard has a tendency to form clumps, we sift it into the liquid mixture.  Beat well and pour over the rest of the ingredients in the casserole.  Chill for at least eight hours.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or so until there is very little “jiggle.”  Note:  Save the bread crusts.  Let them dry out for a few days, then pulverize them into breadcrumbs for later use. We keep a bag of homemade breadcrumbs in the freezer all the time and just add to it.

The Nutmeg is the Difference

When Mary Nelle Graves discovered that the Monterey Mushroom plant in Loudon County, Tennessee, sold big brown bags of fresh mushrooms to the public for a couple of dollars in the 1970s and ’80s, she shared this recipe with us, knowing we would stop by the plant and stock up after visiting with her in Athens, Tennessee. She was a great lover of nutmeg, which is a fascinating addition to the recipe. Lately, in addition to the traditional button mushrooms, or field mushrooms as they’re sometimes called, we have been adding other varieties, such as golden oyster, oyster, and even chanterelles when we can find them. We have made this soup either on Thanksgiving or Christmas, or sometimes both, for over 20 years. Doubling the recipe is a good idea. This goes quickly.

Aunt Nelle’s Cream of Mushroom Soup

Recipe:

  • 1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms 
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon white pepper

Cook mushrooms and onion in butter until tender, but not brown, about 5 minutes. Blend in flour, cook briefly, and then add broth. Cook and stir until slightly thick and bubbly. Let this cool a bit and then whisk in cream, salt, nutmeg, and pepper. Heat through.

We hope these recipes and products speak to you and that you find as much joy in preparing and serving them to your family and friends as we do each holiday season. 

Fred and Jill Sauceman, married now for over 42 years, study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and the South from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee. 

The story above first appeared in our November / December 2022 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!