The little girls and I plan on making my grandmother's Tea Cakes recipe this afternoon, if nothing interrupts. When we'd visit my dad's parents, when I was growing up, my grandmother would sometimes make these cookies. I found the recipe in her old cookbook ('Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking'), and tweaked it a bit years ago so that it seemed just like her cookies. She was fond of writing in the cookbook, but had no notes next to this one. The recipe is for a sugar cookie dough, but Granny always called them Tea Cakes, which sounds cuter anyway.
Here goes:
2-1/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. butter (we'll be using butter-flavored Crisco)
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/4 t. vanilla (likely we'll add a tad more)
1/4 cup milk
Sift dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar, add egg and beat until smooth. Add vanilla and then alternate dry ingredients with milk. Chill dough for a bit then roll out 1/4" thick on floured surface. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and cut with cookie cutter. Round ones are classic. :) Place on greased cookie sheet (we rarely grease our cookie sheets for cookies), and bake at 375F. for 8-10 minutes. Makes about 2-1/2 dozen. We'll probably double the recipe. I mean, really, feeding 10 people 2-1/2 dozen cookies? Think again!
I'm also making some sourdough starter this week. We bake so often, I wanted the challenge of grabbing some wild yeast in the air to feed my water/flour mixture. I fed it for the first time today, and so far, so good. Sunday night was day one and I just mixed 2 cups plain flour with 1/2 cup or so of spring water. Starting today, I fed it and will do so again before bed. At each feeding I'll take out 1/3 c. starter (discarding the excess) and add 1/3 c. flour and 1/3 c. water. We'll see. :)
