Category: Recipes

Mama’s Tea Cakes

Blanche Ella Collier Bowers

I never knew my grandmother on my mother’s side; she died before I was born.  Mother’s stories about her made her sound like the taskmaster and moral guardian of the family, while Papa, Mother’s father, was fun-loving and mischievous.  Both Mama and Papa worked hard on their small farm all their lives, raising five children.  Mother used to say I had Mama’s hands, long-fingered and slim, while she had Papa’s bony, large-knuckled ones.

Mother learned to cook from Mama, as well as how to can and preserve vegetables and fruits, make jams and jellies, and generally make the most of what they were able to grow in their garden patch.  Most of the recipes were in her head, and Mother did not write them down.  When I was in high school I asked her for Mama’s tea cake recipe.  They are simple, thin cookies, that are in fact good with a cup of tea.  I struggled with these, because it helps to know how to handle biscuit dough without over-working it in order to make these cookies!

Mama’s Tea Cakes

2 1/4 cups sugar

about 2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

pinch salt

2 eggs

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup butter (or margarine, butter is better)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients and put them on the biscuit board or pastry sheet where you will roll out the cakes.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients there.  Mix together until you have dough–don’t handle too much!  Roll out thin and cut into round cookies (biscuit cutter or a glass works fine).  Bake until lightly browned.

Optional:  Add lemon zest or orange zest.  Not authentic to the recipe or period, but a nice flavor.

Chocolate Pie: Fudge in a Crust

Photo by bellasavvy.net
Chocolate pie is an emotional subject.  This was my sister Juanita’s favorite dessert years ago.  She had married and moved away, living everywhere from Hawaii to Germany with her Army-officer husband.  Every time she came to visit with her young family, our mother would make a chocolate pie to her specifications–no meringue, the traditional family recipe, no variations.  Juanita would cut a sliver, “just to taste it,” and walk away from it.  Put down that knife!  In no time, another sliver would be gone, and another, and another, until someone else cut a slice in self-defense.

I got Mother’s recipes after she died (see “Home Cooking,” April 14, 2011).  The chocolate pie recipe lacked a lot of information, like oven temperature and how long to bake.  I canvassed the family, consulted other recipes, and experimented a bit.  Here’s the result.  This is not like chocolate pudding pie, or the stuff you get in diners.  It’s very easy, and very chocolate.  I highly recommend it when you’re feeling down and can’t deal with a double boiler.

Mother’s Chocolate Pie

1 unbaked 9″ pie crust (make your own, use refrigerated or frozen)

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons cocoa

3 egg yolks

1 cup milk

1/2 stick butter

1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Mix all dry ingredients, then add egg yolks, milk, butter and vanilla flavoring.  Cook in a saucepan on top of stove until thick.  Put in unbaked pie crust and bake at 350 degrees until crust is brown.

If you like, you can use the egg whites to make meringue.  No advice on that topic!

Blackberries, Cobbler, and Ticks

The best blackberries are wild ones, picked in the heat of summer from brambles in a fence row or along the side of an old dirt road.  The wild ones just have more flavor than domesticated ones.  That squirt of purple juice is richer and sweeter than any strawberry.

Photo by Fir 0002
When we lived on the farm Mother and I picked quarts of them every summer.  This was an ordeal.  Mother always carried a stick in case there were snakes, but the real enemies were chiggers and ticks.  We would dress in long sleeves and long pants, socks and shoes, sweating in the heat, in an effort to foil them.  The blackberry bushes were full of thorns and stickers to tear at your hands.  I always emerged with scars.

After filling up as many plastic buckets as we could carry (if the bushes were full), Mother and I trudged back up the hill to the house.  Then the real work began–hunting for the tiny, biting vampires before they got a chance to attach and suck your blood.  The ticks were smaller than deer ticks; I could only see them if they were in motion.  If I missed one, Mother would light a match, blow it out, and touch it to the tick to make it let go.  We checked each other to make sure none got away.  That’s the action referred to in Brad Paisley’s immortal song, “Ticks.”

But the end result of all the blood and labor was blackberry cobbler.  Here is my mother’s easy cobbler recipe.  You can use any fresh or frozen berries, except I don’t recommend strawberries.

Easy Cobbler

Spray bottom of a 9″ x 12″ baking dish (like Pyrex) with Pam or other oil spray.

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

3/4 cup milk

1 stick butter or margarine, melted

2 1/2 cups berries, sweetened with 1/2 cup sugar

Mix all dry ingredients in baking dish.  Add milk, stir well.  Pour melted butter over dough.  Place sweetened berries on top.  Bake at 350 degrees until top is brown, 45 minutes to 1 hour.