Simple Ingredients for a Simple Life—An old time favorite baked in a wood stove!

It’s just something about an old fashioned southern tea cake that kids love! I have never seen a child that did not LOVE a tea cake!

Cut them all out at one time and store in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. You can have a sweet treat baked in 10 minutes!

My grandmother raised her little family during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Everything was hard to come by, including food. They raised all of what they ate. Vegetables, hogs for meat, chickens for eggs, cows for milk and butter.

They traded eggs, milk, and butter in town for staples like flour and sugar.

Mama said she watched the little chicks from the time they hatched out of the egg. She started begging my granny to fry her a chicken as soon as they started growing little tail feathers.

There were no cars where Mama grew up in the little community of Paris, Mississippi. Well–one. She said there was one car. Everyone else went to town in wagons pulled by mules. And most of the roads here today had not been built. All of the roads were just red clay trails that followed the ridges of the hills–old ridge roads.

My grandfather was a sharecropper. He plowed the fields in O’Tuckalofa River bottom with a mule drawn plow. The landowner got a share of the money from the crop, and my Pappaw got a share.

My mother said she would always climb up in his lap every evening in the spring and check his old denim jumper pockets. If he plowed up a rabbit nest, he would bring her a baby rabbit. He was always bringing home wild creatures…baby rabbits, squirrels, raccoons…one time he brought me a little screech owl!

He was an old man, 65 years old, before he bought himself a little economy car. I remember my mother teaching him how to drive. We owned a little country grocery store, and he drove in circles around the gravel parking lot.

Mama said she didn’t realize he knew nothing about brakes, and on their first go-round, he was hollering “Whoa!” That is the command for a horse or mule to “STOP!”

I always begged my granny to bake tea cakes. They were so delicious to me. To her, they were an inexpensive sweet treat. Just flour, sugar, milk, and butter–ingredients she always had on hand. And they are amazingly simple to make!

When I suggested that we bake tea cakes for Bella’s Blog, she danced a jig. It’s just something about an old fashioned southern tea cake that kids love! I have never seen a child that did not LOVE a tea cake!

I like to bake them so they are still really light and not browned. Baked just enough to not be doughy. They keep that texture between cake and cookie that way. Some like to bake them until they are golden brown. And that’s fine! But if you brown them, you will get a crunchier tea cake–more like a cookie.

You can bake as many or as few as you like! Just keep the leftover dough in the refrigerator until you are ready to bake a few. You will just need to let it warm up a little on the countertop before you try to roll it out, because it will be as hard as a rock!

Kneading it gently between warm hands speeds up the process. You don’t want to let it come to room temperature though. The dough needs to be really cold to cut and bake well.

I cut all of mine out at one time and store what is not baked that day in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. You can just take out 6 or 8 to bake and not have to roll out dough!

Old-Time Tea Cakes

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter softened
• 2 C. sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 T. buttermilk OR (1 T. yogurt + 1 T. whole milk)
• 5 C. all-purpose flour
• 1 t. soda
• 1 t. vanilla extract

Method:

• CREAM: 2 sticks softened butter with a wooden spoon or electric mixer.

• ADD: 2 C. sugar and continue to cream.

• ADD: 3 eggs and mix well.

• ADD: 2 T. buttermilk. Or you can substitute 1 T. yogurt and 1 T. whole milk.

• Add: 1 t. vanilla extract.

• MIX: in the 5 C. flour + 1. t. soda. Add gradually. The dough will be VERY STIFF. You may have to get in the bowl with your hands and knead it as if you were making bread to incorporate all of the flour. Do NOT add more liquid of any kind. If you keep kneading, the dough will form.

• SHAPE: dough into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.

• CHILL: for at least 2-3 hours. You may refrigerate for several days, taking out enough at a time for 8-10 cookies.

To Bake in a Wood Stove–(or bake for 10-12 minutes in conventional oven)

Build up fire until you have a red-hot bed of coals. Your damper (air intake) should be all the way open. My oven thermometer reads between 350-400°. If you do not have a thermometer on your oven, you will be ok as long as you have your damper open and a big bed of coals.

• GREASE: a cookie sheet very lightly. I do not grease mine at all, and they have never stuck. If you get too much grease, the tea cakes will flatten out and not hold their shape.
• WORKING: with 1/3 to 1/2 half of the dough at a time, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about 1/4 inch thick.

• CUT: out the tea cakes. The traditional ones are round. I use my biscuit cutter for these.
• RESHAPE: leftover dough and continue cutting or return to refrigerator.

TIP: I cut all of the cookies out at one time and store them in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. That way I can pull out just 5 or 6 to bake and not have to fool with rolling out the dough again!

• PLACE: tea cakes about 1 inch apart on cookie sheet.
• SPRINKLE: with sugar.

• BAKE: 8-10 minutes or until very lightly browned just around the edges.

• COOL: on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling. They won’t ever get cool! Greedy little hands will eat them right off the cooling rack!

Weekly Timeless Treasure

This week’s Timeless Treasure is a rocking chair that belonged to Bella’s 5th great-grandfather, Isaac Williams.

Isaac Williams was born in 1811, and he was one of the first settlers to move to Calhoun County, Mississippi in 1833. He said he watched the Indians cross the Tennessee River leaving on the Trail of Tears and moved to Mississippi from Alabama the “Year the Stars Fell.”

Bella and her big sister, Abby, are the 8th generation to live in our little bottom along Horsepen Creek–not half a mile from where Isaac’s original pioneer log cabin stood.

The old photo below was taken at his 99th birthday in 1910. Many of Bella’s Williams ancestors are pictured. My grandfather, Aubrey Shuck Williams and his brothers are three of the little boys on the bottom front row.