BYU NewsNet - Worldwide Ward Cookbook adds a new ‘prophets’ section

LDS church members from 46 countries around the world submitted a total of 440 recipes to the Worldwide Ward Cookbook released last year, but most people don’t know the book contains an additional “Prophets” section.

Holly Farnsworth of Fort Duchesne put the collection of prophets’ favorite recipes together.

“We’ve had them for quite a while,” Farnsworth said. “My girls were in Young Women and they were doing an activity on different prophets and one of the things they did was make the recipes and let the girls taste them. It was a more engaging way to learn the history of the prophets.”

The recipes have become a learning and bonding tool for Farnsworth and her family.

“I just use them for a Family Home Evening activity,” she said. “I use them in my lessons, I think it adds more and makes them [the prophets] more human.”

Farnsworth said she isn’t sure where the recipes originally came from.

“I honestly don’t know where they got these recipes,” she said. “I imagine that they’ve just been handed down. The Joseph Smith custard pie was quoted from the Salt Lake City 18th ward cookbook, so I imagine most of them came from there.”

Some of the recipes featured are Lorenzo Snow’s Yorkshire Pudding, Ezra Taft Benson’s Lemon Meringue Pie, Brigham Young’s Buttermilk Donuts and Joseph Smith’s Johnny Cakes. Brigham Young’s buttermilk donuts were so popular that they were sold at the ZCMI department store in Salt Lake City.

“We make donuts and pies in our Food Preparation in the Home class,” said Dana Adcock, a BYU School of Family Life professor. “Baking in general takes more precision because there’s more food science involved but it’s not necessarily more difficult than cooking. Occasionally there’s that person that can make biscuits without a recipe and it works but in general you need one.”

This cookbook has been a high-selling hit in the LDS community.

“We have sold a total of 200 cookbooks,” said Maureen Porter, a BYU Bookstore employee in the Religious Books section. “That’s a lot of cookbooks considering it just came out in mid-February of this year.”

Farnsworth said she hopes everyone enjoys the recipes she collected.

“We love to eat and we love to learn,” she said in a news release from Covenant Communications. “And I just thought that I would pass them on [to others]. Maybe someone else would have as much fun with them as we have.”