Making dough

12/27/05

By CHARLOTTE BOECHLER
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Betsy Kain raises funds for charity by selling her homemade goodies

Betsy Kain is known for making her famous buttercrunch, peanut and pecan brittles and bourbon balls for family and friends. All she asks for in return is that they enjoy it.

And hand over some cash.

"I'm shameless!" admitted the Santa Barbara resident with a grin.

Although she charges $8 per half-pound, she could probably get a lot more. One of her closest friends, Cynthy Ardell, 63, has purchased a couple packages each of buttercrunch and bourbon balls. She doesn't mind. In fact, she said she would easily pay twice as much -- if not more.

"It is yummy," she said. "As soon as you open it up, it is all gone!"

Most people would probably lose friends over something like this. Not Mrs. Kain. That's because any profit she makes is actually being donated to charity. Sparrow Village, a hospice in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, cares for terminally ill adults and children with AIDS and those who are orphaned because of the disease. When Mrs. Kain and her husband, David, heard about the devastating conditions these people face and would continue to face if not for Sparrow Village, they instantly wanted to help. Mr. Kain suggested sending a letter to friends that asked for donations.

"I said, 'They get letters every day asking for money!' I'd feel terrible asking my friends for money," said Mrs. Kain, who lives in a modest home in Hope Ranch. "Then I thought, 'How can we get money without begging our friends?'

So how, in a nutshell, did she get the idea to sell her pecan-laden pieces and other goodies?

"I used to give away the buttercrunch as gifts -- lots of it. Friends seemed to love it," said Mrs. Kain, who makes it on her old four-burner Tappan stove, the pilot light of which her husband constantly has to relight. "Good friends of ours were visiting from Henley-on-Thames, England. They love the buttercrunch. We told them about Sparrow Village and said we're thinking about selling this candy (as a fundraiser).

"They bought 11-1/2 pounds, filled a suitcase, and took it back to England."

Since she started making regular batches of her candies several months ago, Mrs. Kain has been tempting just about everyone she knows with them. She's pitched them to fellow docents at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and hawked them to fellow church members at All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church. Her husband has even marketed them to friends in his walking group and his men's discussion group.

"How many people have we sold them to, David?" Mrs. Kain asked on a recent day as she took a break at her dining room table after making a batch of pecan brittle. "He's definitely the numbers man," she explained.

Probably about 40, he guessed. Then there was the cocktail party that friends held to help raise awareness of Sparrow Village and, hopefully in the process, funds.

"There were probably 55 people there," he added. "For each couple, we handed out half a pound as a goodie bag."

They handed out half a pound?

"Thank you!" said Mr. Kain, raising his hands in the air, clearly relieved that someone else made the point he's been trying to make. Mr. Kain, a former portfolio manager in the trust department at a Pittsburgh bank who handled billions before his retirement, clearly understands how to make a buck.

But Mrs. Kain occasionally needs to be reminded to take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself. She admitted when the head of a local organization that provides free food to low-income HIV-positive clients and families offered to buy some of her goodies when she found out about her efforts, she gave them to her instead.

"I couldn't sell candy to a food bank!" Mrs. Kain, who seems as genuinely sweet as her confections, said in her defense.

She's getting better, though. When friend Shelley Shoemaker suggested they co-host a cookie-decorating party at her Goleta condo clubhouse on a recent evening to help raise funds and awareness for their respective African causes, Mrs. Kain agreed. The $25 admission, which included two dozen plain sugar cookies that could be decorated and taken home, went to Ms. Shoemaker's cause, Mama na Dada's Kunya Village Bakery. Whatever profit Mrs. Kain made from her homemade candies went to Sparrow Village.

Standing near a table full of her round plastic containers of buttercrunch and bags of pecans from Georgia that she resells, Mrs. Kain was approached by a woman interested in her involvement with Sparrow Village.

"There are a lot of people who have the time and not the money to go to Africa. There are a lot of people who have the money and not the time," said Donna Kall, 49, a life coach in Santa Barbara. "It would be great to get them together."

Maybe, she suggested, some sort of volunteer fund could be established to pay for flights.

"I know a lot of people who would go, if they had the money, to do whatever is needed," said Ms. Kall. She includes herself. "I'm willing to schlep. Whatever. Build things, take care of kids, whatever."

It's always been her dream to go to Africa.

"I'm really interested in the AIDS crisis," she said. "There's a whole generation missing in Africa. You've got a lot of little kids. You've got a lot of grandparents. But you've got nobody to care for them."

One of her closest friends, she said, actually died of AIDS in the 1980s -- "back when nobody knew what to do. The nurses were afraid to touch him."

After talking to Mrs. Kain for a few moments, Ms. Kall rejoined the party -- without any buttercrunch.

"The whole idea anyway was to spread the word -- not make money," Mrs. Kain insisted.

Perhaps realizing what she just said, she grabbed a Ziploc bag full of buttercrunch.

"Actually, I'm going to put out samples -- see if I can lure them," she said, heading out into the crowd of tables, a move that would no doubt please her husband.

It can't always be easy asking money for something that you would normally give to people you know. Considering Mrs. Kain has never been to Africa herself, what is it about Sparrow Village that makes her willing?

"They take in the very most destitute," said Mrs. Kain, the next day in her dining room. "The children, besides the trauma of their parents dying, now have nobody to care for them."

Added her husband: "Some of these people are actually found at the city dump, which is near where Sparrow Village is."

"The humane society officer who goes to look for abandoned dogs at the dump often finds these orphans scrounging for food," said Mrs. Kain. "It gets worse -- some children hide in garbage cans if they're small enough because they get sexually molested."

Her friend, the registered nurse who has volunteered at Sparrow Village, said several children were suffering from genital warts as a result of being assaulted on the streets.

"They could not treat the children. The medicine to treat the disease is so expensive," said Mrs. Kain. "Their medical budget has to go to life-threatening illnesses."

Mrs. Kain hopes that the money she raises through people buying her candies or simply writing a check will help with whatever is needed -- medicine, caregiver training, clothes, schooling -- at the hospice. So far, she's raised more than $19,000 toward an interim goal of $50,000. She realizes the portion coming from her candies isn't much -- particularly when you're only selling $8 worth at a time, only have a kitchen so big and are running out of friends. Which is why she has considered expanding her efforts and selling her product to the general public. She has already reserved an Internet domain name.

But given that her customers so far have been family and friends, how do we know the buttercrunch or any of her other candies are really any good?

"People tell us they are," said Mrs. Kain, adding that one of them is the friend who talked to her about setting up a Web site. "I gave him some buttercrunch in lieu of paying a huge consulting fee! He said, 'This candy is like OxyContin!' It's highly addictive."

What exactly is in it?

"It's heavy on pecans, heavy on butter, heavy on sugar," said Mrs. Kain.

So, what's it like working around it all day? Putting her hand to her forehead, she admitted, "That's the hardest part of making this candy."

"There's a lot of slippage," her husband chuckled.

Mrs. Kain agreed.

"There's a lot of slippage!"

TO DONATE

To send a tax-deductible donation to Sparrow Village, make checks payable to the Federated Church of Chagrin Falls, P.O. Box 60, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, 44022, Attn: Marty Culbertson. Be sure to write Sparrow Village on the memo line. The church, which processes U.S. contributions, has collected about $120,000 over the past three years. For more information about Sparrow Village or on how to obtain a gift card that states you made a donation in someone's name, e-mail Betsy or David Kain at sbsparrowvillage@yahoo.com. Sparrow Village information is also available at www.sparrowvillage.org. Mama na Dada information is available at www.mamadada.org.

Pecan or Peanut Brittle

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

1 cup water

2 cups raw peanuts or pecans, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put the sugar, corn syrup and water in a large, heavy saucepan and cook over moderate heat, stirring only until the sugar has dissolved. Continue to cook to soft-ball stage (238 degrees). Add the peanuts or pecans and salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches the hard-crack stage (300 degrees). Remove from heat and stir in the butter, baking soda and vanilla. Pour into a generously buttered shallow 9-by-13-inch baking pan or rimmed cookie sheet. Spread as thinly as possible. Wearing clean, dry rubber gloves, stretch mixture to make as thin as possible. When hardened and completely cooled, break into irregular 2-inch pieces and store immediately in a tightly sealed airtight container. Yield: about 2 pounds.

RAFAEL MALDONADO/NEWS-PRESS
Betsy Kain stretches pecan brittle for family and friends who stretch their pocketbooks for Sparrow Village, an AIDS hospice.

Source: Betsy Kain. Adapted from the Peanut Brittle recipe in "The Gift of Southern Cooking" ($29.95, 2003)