Cathy Dauzat

Cathy Dauzat of Vardaman was a first place winner for her Sweet Potato Cobbler in 2011 and a third place winner in 2012 for her Sweet Potato Apple Spice Cake in the annual Sweet Potato Cooking Contest. She has entered the contest almost every year for the past five or six.
When it’s time to get ready for it, she is not one who spends a lot of time looking for a recipe or thinking about it, she just throws something together. She says Mitzi Hardin, Sylvia Clark and Maxine Blue always encourage her and many other people to enter the contest.
At least one-fourth cup of sweet potatoes is required for each recipe entry and one year when she was making her dessert for the contest, her husband Terry, and son T.J. were making Moma’s Dip. Just for fun, they added half of a cup of the grated sweet potatoes Cathy had not used in her dish and said it was good.

Unknown to them, she took some of the dip, along with Fritos Scoops chips, and entered it in the contest in Terry’s name. At the banquet when they called out his name out as a recipe winner, she “laughed until she cried.” “Terry always makes the dip and it’s a great dip, and quick,” Cathy said, “but you have to use Hellman’s.”
Cathy grew up around sweet potatoes. Her grandmother, Louise Baker, and mother, Shirley Cannon, used to take sliced sweet potatoes, fry them and sprinkle with brown sugar. She and her brother called them “sugar chips.” She remembers standing in  a chair wearing her grandmother’s apron that was “a mile too long,” and helping her cook.

“She was my rock” and where she learned most about cooking from. Cathy said that when Ro-Tel tomatoes first came out, her grandmother bought a case. She would heat a can, add a little water, and make  cornbread to crumble in it.
“If Mama wouldn’t make us sweet milk egg gravy or chocolate gravy, we would get our grandmother to.” When Cathy’s husband’s family comes from Louisiana, part of the 19 nieces and nephews want chocolate gravy, and the others want the sweet milk egg.

When Terry first visited here, his first meal was peas, butterbeans, fried okra and cornbread– “redneck food” he called it, and totally different from what he was used to, because for one thing his family likes Jiffy cornbread.
Cathy says he has adapted to “redneck food” now, but when the families are together for Thanksgiving, she makes traditional dressing and they make rice dressing. Thanksgiving Day night and Christmas Day night are big at her house, as is Sunday morning breakfast.
Though she doesn’t have a favorite food, she likes to cook with shrimp and she likes easy recipes.
Vegetable soup was something she loved until she got the Mary’s Crab Soup recipe from her niece in Louisiana, adding that she lived in Louisiana for six years and misses the Cajun food.
Sweet Potato Cobbler
2 cans crescent rolls
1-8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups candied sweet potatoes
1/2 stick melted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tsp. milk
Spread one can crescent rolls on bottom of long cake pan. Mix cream cheese and sugar. Spread it over layered crescent rolls. Then layer candied sweet potatoes. Put two cans crescent rolls on top of all of the above. Drizzle melted butter on top of rolls. Bake for 30 minutes on 350° or until rolls are golden brown. Mix powdered sugar and milk. Drizzle on top of hot bread while still warm.

Mary’s Crab Soup
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 pint half and half milk
2 cans milk (I use soup cans to fill with whole milk)
1 cup green onions
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2-1 tsp. liquid crab boil
3 cans crab meat
1-#2 bag small salad shrimp
2 cans whole kernel corn
Dash of celery salt
Dash of garlic salt
Saute green onions, butter, celery and garlic salt. Mix soup, milk, half and half milk, crab boil. Add crab meat, shrimp and corn. Bring to boil, then put on low and simmer. Serve with oyster crackers.

Moma’s Dip
4 cups sharp cheddar cheese
1 bunch green onions
1 cup chopped pecans
1 large jar real bacon bits
1 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise
Optional: 1/2 cup grated sweet potato
Mix all together well and serve with Fritos Scoops chips.

Sweet Potato Apple Spice Cake
1 spice cake mix
2 Tbsp. oil
2 eggs
1 cup nuts, chopped
1 cup raisins
1 cup apple pie filling
1/2 cup creamed sweet potatoes
Mix eggs and oil together. Add cake mix, nuts, raisins, apple pie filling, sweet potatoes. Mix all together. Bake in bundt pan sprayed heavily with Pam. Bake 50 minutes at 375°.

Chess Squares
1 box yellow cake mix
1 egg
1 stick butter
Mix well and put in bottom of a 9×13 glass dish.
Filling:
1 box confectioners sugar
2 eggs
1-8 oz. cream cheese
Mix filling well. Put on top of cake mixture. Bake on 375° until golden brown.