Twin sisters offer up double the deliciousness at farmers market
When Carol Rouse was a little girl, her mother would buy the ingredients to make margarine and allow Carol and her twin sister, Donna Organ, to mix the ingredients.
Rouse traces her love for doing things in the kitchen to those younger days.
She quickly progressed from mixing coloring with white lard, to make it look like butter, to baking cakes and other sweets.
Carol and Donna were born in Danville, Ill. When they were 8 or 9, they moved with their parents to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where they grew up and later attended Fort Lauderdale High School.
After graduating from high school, they moved to Nashville and attended Trevecca University.
Throughout the years, Carol and Donna have remained close in contact, if not proximity.
When we lived apart, anytime a certain amount of time went by, if we hadnt heard from each other, we were trying to get hold of each other, says Rouse. We would try to keep in touch. Donna felt the same way. You just get busy with your jobs and your husbands, and you kind of forget to call, but we never did. We always kept in touch. Our older sister is more on her own, you know, because shes older. But theres just a connection when theres a twin.
When Donna moved to North Carolina, Carol followed, moving to Asheville. She later moved to Jonesborough, where she and her husband had found a house.
When we moved here, says Rouse, we told Donna about it and she said that she wanted to come back up where the mountains are, because she was down in Florida taking care of our mother, who wasnt doing well and needed help. Shes since passed away. Donna wanted to come back to where the mountains were, so we said, Come on up. Weve got a place for you.
Rouse fell in love with Jonesborough and the Jonesborough Farmers Market.
We love historic Jonesborough, she says. Its just beautiful and its quaint. We love the street that the market is on. Theres no other market that is on a street like this not close around here.
The Jonesborough Farmers Market, however, is not Rouses first experience working at a market.
I got started doing farmers markets and craft shows about 20 years ago in Fort Lauderdale, she says. My sister and I our older sister did markets and crafts shows, so Donna and I went in to help her. We also made cakes and things like that to sell along with her. We got started here because of our experience and being involved down in Florida.
Although Rouse has been baking under the name Carols Cakes for about three years, she has been running a baking business for nearly 20 years. Carol and Donna do the baking in Carols kitchen. While they enjoy baking together, their baking is very much a business.
Rouses primary product is cake. Many of the cakes that Rouse makes and sells come from her familys recipes.
I love cake. There are so many good cakes out there, says Rouse. We had a lot of them in our family recipes that weve sold over the years. And I thought, This is a good thing and I like that. I like Carols Cakes.
In addition to the cakes, the twins sell cookies, cinnamon rolls (which their mother used to make for them with leftover pie dough), old-fashioned whoopee pies and muffins.
While they make and sell the more traditional cookies, such as peanut butter, chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, they also offer more unusual breakfast cookies, made with bacon, cornflakes and raisins.
We just started using the bacon in the breakfast cookies, since thats kind of the craze right now, Rouse says. This is something that I got myself. [My mother] didnt make these, but I found the recipe for that in the newspaper, no less, and I thought, Hmm, this looks good, so I think Ill try it. Everybody loves it.
Rouse not only sells muffins at the farmers market, she also sells muffins to the General Store and Eatery in downtown Jonesborough.
They buy a different variety of muffins each week, Rouse says. They order them pretty regularly every week. We sell chocolate chip muffins, pumpkin muffins, blueberry muffins, strawberry muffins and banana nut muffins. Thats just about the extent of it.
She is working on creating a website through which she hopes to expand her business.
Additionally, she sells her products through the Jonesborough Farmers Market online store during the markets off-season.
Carols Cakes also offers gluten-free products. In their gluten-free line, the bakers use flour made from garbanzo beans, potato starch, tapioca, white sorghum and fava beans.
Theres been a call for [gluten-free] more and more, Rouse says. Im probably going to branch out and do some gluten-free muffins. I have the gluten-free red velvet cake, and Im probably going to make another cake with the gluten-free flour.
Regardless of what she is baking, Rouse maintains a high quality for each of her baked goods.
We wouldnt sell it if we didnt like it or we didnt think that it tasted good, she says. Thats our mindset on it.