Kay Emel-Powell, a real-life Betty Crocker, dies at 76
Her name never made the cover, but Kay Emel-Powell was the creative power behind a number of popular Betty Crocker cookbooks that landed on supermarket shelves and other retail outlets in the 1980s.
As a 17-year veteran of General Mills, Emel-Powell was a key figure in the Betty Crocker Kitchens, where she wrote and tested hundreds of recipes.
The booklets sold for as little as $1.98 and were routinely placed in magazine racks at supermarket checkout lines across the United States. Before retiring in 2003, Emel-Powell also helped launch Bettycrocker.com.
“We personified Betty Crocker,” said Mary Bartz, who worked with Emel-Powell and now coordinates the canning and baking competitions at the Minnesota State Fair. “The essence of Betty Crocker was to offer a warm, friendly approach.”
Emel-Powell of Bloomington, Minnesota died Aug. 9 after two decades of living with progressive multiple sclerosis. She was 76.
She grew up in rural Kansas, where she won her first cookbook by becoming the local 4-H baking champion at the age of 16. After graduating from Kansas State University with degrees in foods and nutrition and business, she was hired in 1969 as a home economist at Pillsbury.
“At the time, Pillsbury was looking for employees who came from different parts of the country to represent what those places were doing in the kitchen,” said Karen Sorensen, who joined Emel-Powell at Pillsbury in 1969. “I was Illinois and Kay was Kansas.”
One of their jobs brought them into people’s kitchens, where they observed mothers baking brownies and biscuits to see if they had trouble opening the packages or following the directions. They also conducted so-called “tolerance tests,” seeing how much they could mess up a recipe without ruining the end result.
“If a product was so sensitive that it failed if you were off by a teaspoon of water, we’d go back and say we may need to reformulate the mix so it is more forgiving to consumers,” said Anne Klein, another former Pillsbury colleague.
