From My Kitchen to Yours, Jane Jayroe Gamble and Terri Cornett
Some recipes require a creative mind. Some require particular tools. Others, uncompromising precision: precision developed by a necessity common to the plains…and Angel Food Cake.
Terri Cornett learned diligence and precision as a child. Born in Topeka, KS, her father worked at the airforce base and her mother worked as an insurance agency clerk. Terri’s grandmother taught her the importance of being exact from a life of hardship during the depression. Precision today meant having ingredients for meals tomorrow. Eggs were gathered from chickens, and a working farm or productive garden was managed throughout the growing season. From her parents’ work to the necessity of her grandmother’s life, Terri internalized determination and focus. As a young girl, Terri remembers her parents, father in his chair and mother in the kitchen, marveling at the small black and white TV as a young woman from Laverne, Oklahoma conducted her way to become Miss America. The confidence the woman projected was an inspiration for Terri.
For Christmas in 1956, Terri’s father bought her mother, Ann, a Sunbeam stand mixer accompanied by a red cookbook, within it a recipe for Angel Food Cake. Cooking was her mother’s love language. “I watched her make the Angel Food Cake for years. She organized, prepared ahead of time, and then watched the clock, always ready.” It was a form of care Terri inherited. “I learned to bake in high school with that same mixer. I loved holidays and birthdays. I would bake for friends and special occasions.” Eventually, Terri’s mother taught her how to make the Angel Food Cake.
Terri’s drive and care led her to a successful television career in Tulsa. And, when she married former OKC mayor Mick Cornett, it meant moving to OKC, a new community with few close connections.
Jane Jayroe Gamble’s past and path were similar. Jane’s grandmother and grandfather lived in the Oklahoma panhandle during the depression and dust bowl. Necessity was king. Jane was raised in Laverne, Oklahoma on her grandmother’s stories of joy and beauty laid against the backdrop of dugout shelters and prairie fires so close they hid from the heat. While similar on its face, the precision out of necessity that Terri inherited was no longer a stringent requirement of Jane’s family life, where creativity reigned. Jane experienced success as 1967’s Miss America and in journalism, government, and in a life dedicated to faith and civic duty. Her adaptive creativity shone throughout. But, of all her successes, baking and its science were never on the list.
Jane first tasted Terri’s Angel Food Cake at a friend’s birthday, after befriending the newly minted OKC resident. Jane knew what it meant to uproot her life and felt an immediate kinship with Terri. Impressed by the cake’s texture, subtle flavor, and perfect form, Jane asked Terri if she would teach her how to bake it. Terri agreed, and Jane bought a beautiful blue mixer. “I was honored she asked to learn and to share it,” Terri recalled. “I never imagined one day I would teach Miss America how to bake.”
Jane, with her creative temperament, must have quickly known she was in trouble. “There is no forgiveness for this recipe,” Terri explains. “I was almost a drill sergeant. I kept yelling ‘Stop! No, No, you can’t do that!’ When I left I thought, ‘She must think I’m the bossiest person ever.’ I’m just glad she has some good memories.” Jane corroborates Terri’s retelling. “She was a drill sergeant!” Jane says laughing. “She reminded me of my grandmother. She said, ‘You have to do it just like this and when separating the eggs you have to get every bit.’ And I thought, just use an extra egg. [The cake] tastes fabulous. I don’t care if it’s perfect.”
Not all gifts are simple. A century of plains’ history, with its struggles, necessities, and successes, all sifted into a fraught tutorial between a perfectionist and a creative. Jane still refers to Terri as her dear friend and makes the cake for gatherings. Terri still talks about Jane in glowing and honorific terms. Although its final product is light in weight, the gift of this recipe carries generations of meaning, hope, and faith.
