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NATCHEZ — Ruth Powers has been cooking all of her life, and she credits her maternal grandmother and her father for teaching her how to do it well.

“My grandmother was a good Southern cook. She had a number of family recipes she had gotten from my grandfather’s family when they married,” Powers said. “I remember first sitting at the table and watching her and later, cooking alongside her.”

Powers is program coordinator at St. Mary Basilica in Natchez and is an original member of the Natchez Cook Club, on which the Natchez Cook Club Facebook page is based.

Powers loves to bake, as did her father, Robert Schumway.

“Dad spent his childhood in the Masonic Children’s Home in Guthrie, Oklahoma. This was during Dustbowl Oklahoma,” she said. “The orphanage was forward thinking. The boys learned to cook and sew and the girls learned basic home repair. Dad also learned how to crochet, but that’s another story.”

Powers’ father ran away from home for a time.

“The first job he got as a teenager was working in Mrs. Baird’s Bakery in Fort Worth, Texas. He said he slept on a park bench until he earned enough money to pay for a room in the YMCA.”

She makes her grandmother’s recipe for fruitcake every year in batches of eight at a time because so many of her friends look forward to receiving one.

“We are pretty sure the recipe came from my grandfather’s family in Ireland,” Powers said.

“I guess I get my love for cooking from both sides of the family. Dad was a baker. He made amazing breads and cakes. The one thing I wish that I could do that he did beautifully was decorate fancy cakes. I don’t have the eye for it or the steadiness of hand,” she said. “When my brother and I were in school at Cathedral, each year my dad would make really fancy, decorated cakes for the Cathedral Fall Festival.

“I enjoy baking breads, pies, cakes and muffins. I get that from daddy,” she said. “As I got older, I started experimenting with various ethnic foods. I enjoy the new flavors and new ingredients. Right now I’m on a Mediterranean cooking jag. That’s one of the things the Cook Club does. We experiment with some of the ethnic cuisines together.”

The four original members of Cook Club get together monthly for dinners that have different themes and foods. The latest Cook Club theme was a cocktail party.

“I provided the alcohol and stuff to mix the drinks with. I researched classic cocktail recipes and made a set of cards with the recipes for everyone to take home with them,” Powers said. “We did French cooking one time and I did Coq Au Vin. Italian cooking kind of comes in with the Mediterranean group and I enjoy making lasagna and pastas with different sauces.

“My thing is, if you see a recipe that looks good, don’t be afraid of it. Try it. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t. At Cook Club, we laugh and say that’s what Cook Club does. We take a recipe and run it up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes.”

Ruth Powers’ Family Fruitcake Recipe

Note from Ruth: This is exactly what I wrote down from my grandmother, Lillian Crooks Murray. I’ve been making these for almost 50 years now, so there’s a lot of “add stuff until it looks right” involved.

Makes 4 cakes

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour 4 loaf pans.

Cream together 1 lb sugar and 1/2 lb butter until light and fluffy.

Add 6 eggs 1 at a time, stirring well.

Stir in 4 c flour (reserve some to flour fruit and nuts)

Mix in 1/2 pound candied fruit

1 lb golden raisins

1/4 lb chopped dates

Stir in 1 lb chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds. (More pecans than walnuts, about 1/2 c almonds)

Add cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg to taste (more cinnamon than nutmeg and more nutmeg than allspice)

Mix in 2-2 1/2 c whiskey until a pourable batter forms.

Dissolve 1 t baking soda in 1/4 c water in mix in.

Pour 1/4 of the batter into each pan. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour or until a toothpick in the middle of the loaf comes out clean. Cool for 15 minutes and turn out to finish cooling on a wire rack. Wrap tightly with foil and store in a cool, dry place. Will keep up to 3 months wrapped.