Teacakes

[joiei]

Oh so old fashioned but oh so good. Elbert Mackey of Austin is bringing out a book of recipes for these delights that are perfect with an afternoon cup of tea.

[CKatCook]

Oh so old fashioned but oh so good.    Elbert Mackey of Austin is bringing out a book of recipes for these delights that are perfect with an afternoon cup of tea.

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I have always in enjoyed the simplicity of tea cakes. But I am also a huge sugar cookie fan.

Sometimes simple is better...

[HungryC]

Has anyone else ever heard teacakes called "pillowcase cookies"? Several elderly informants have used this name--supposedly you cooled 'em on a pillowcase or stored the baked cookies in a clean cotton pillowcase?

[The Old Foodie]

Interesting. In England a tea-cake used to mean a sort of sweet flat yeast bun, usually served toasted. Here is the original Mrs Beeton's recipe from 1861.

TEA-CAKES.

2 lbs. of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 1/4 lb. of butter or lard, 1 egg, a piece of German yeast the size of a walnut, warm milk.

Put the flour (which should be perfectly dry) into a basin mix with it the salt, and rub in the butter or lard; then beat the egg well, stir to it the yeast, and add these to the flour with as much warm milk as will make the whole into a smooth paste, and knead it well. Let it rise near the fire, and, when well risen, form it into cakes; place them

on tins, let them rise again for a few minutes before putting them into the oven, and bake from 1/4 to 1/2 hour in a moderate oven. These are very nice with a few currants and a little sugar added to the other ingredients: they should be put in after the butter is rubbed in. These cakes should be buttered, and eaten hot as soon as baked; but, when stale, they are very nice split and toasted; or, if dipped in milk, or even water, and covered with a basin in the oven till hot, they will be almost equal to new.

TO TOAST TEA-CAKES.

Cut each tea-cake into three or four slices, according to its thickness; toast them on both sides before a nice clear fire, and as each slice is done, spread it with butter on both sides. When a cake is toasted, pile the slices one on the top of the other, cut them into quarters, put them on a very hot plate, and send the cakes immediately to table. As they are wanted, send them in hot, one or two at a time, as, if allowed to stand, they spoil, unless kept in a muffin-plate over a basin of boiling water.

[racheld]

Ahhh, Foodie, Dear,

Another of your wise and wonderful recipes---I LOVE Mrs. Beeton. I especially love the recipes which begin: First draw your rabbit. . .

Teacakes

[emilyr]

Has anyone else ever heard teacakes called "pillowcase cookies"?  Several elderly informants have used this name--supposedly you cooled 'em on a pillowcase or stored the baked cookies in a clean cotton pillowcase?

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Is that like a meringue cookie? We always use a paper bag, but once, my grandmother talked about baking them on racks covered with old linens or tea towels. I wouldn't call it a tea cake, though, other than the fact that they could be eaten with tea.

[maggiethecat]

In my Nana's English kitchen a teacake was basically a round scone, and if you check out the recipes in this article they're pretty scone-like. Not quite a biscuit -- sweeter and richer. And always split with butter and preserves.

[caroled]

(racheld---didn't sign on correctly---still haven't caught up to the electronic age)

Plain, roundish, with little flat margins sometimes from touching on the cookie sheet. Sugar on top. Pink sugar, shaken with a drop of McCormick red food color and left to dry, then beaten in a baggie to separate the hard little clumps---if you're making for company or a shower tea.

Much like a sweet, flattened-before-rising biscuit; Mammaw's big old red-handled rolling pin rolled them out thinner, and they were cut with a both-ends-cut-out tuna can, but you still had to look twice to tell what was on that big yellow plate. It coulda been left-from-breakfast biscuits, cooled and floppy and destined for bread pudding or a quick supper dessert, made while you were getting the ice into the tea glasses---biscuits split and smashed flat into the skillet with butter and brown sugar, sizzled crisp into our own primitive palmiers.

But when you peeked in, inhaled the familiar fragrance of that old cabinet, with its decades of good pastries and pies and cornbread, and the the exotic aura of the ever-present pineapple layer cake---seeing the stacked pale rounds brought a bright little bubble of maybe, and when you spied the glint of sugar on top---

And I think her recipe was interchangeable, with a handful of sugar, a little vanilla and a glug of extra milk being the only difference between teacake and biscuit. No jam or butter on ours---you're supposed to taste only the sweet and the thought of a tang of buttermilk, with the perfume of good Watkins vanilla.

And teacakes are always served cold; a paper doily beneath is de rigueur for teas and grand lady doin's, but two grabbed together and carried up a tree on a hot afternoon, a Tarzan paperback tucked in the waistband of your shorts---ain't no topping that.

ETA---I now see I'm signed in as Caro---she would well remember the teacakes at Mammaw's house, but she missed out on knowing that old Hoosier cabinet---it was traded to a local upholstery lady for doing covers for the living room couch and chair---what a sad waste of such a wonderfully iconic family treasure. I still miss it.

Edited May 3, 2008 by caroled (log)