So it was that I have found myself in a state of missing my Grandmother and being nastalgic about the influence she had on my childhood, and this has made me think of her in everything I do. I know this is the case with the rest of my family as well. When my sister recently worked in her new yard, she was naturally thinking of Grandmother as she was working with flowers and things. So many things we've learned from her. In addition to the "life lessons," she taught us the things she grew up doing, skills that many people of my generation may not learn anymore but were once necessary for any girl to acquire, like sewing.
One thing I can't remember Grandmother teaching us (or doing a lot of) is cooking or baking. My Granddaddy cooked many meals for her. I'm sure my Grandmother cooked, and certainly I can remember helping her with big meals for holidays, but it wasn't something she was always doing.
However, at Grandmother's house, there were ALWAYS cookies in the cookie jar. Almost always these were store-bought cookies, usually the little round ones that had some kind of white icing on them (does anyone remember these??) or chocolate chip. They were never a brand like Chips A'hoy or Oreos.
There was one exception - one cookie that Grandmother made herself on a semi-regular basis. They were round, yellow and soft like cake, very sweet, and almost always slightly burnt around the edges. Grandmother called them Tea Cake Cookies.
I hadn't thought about these cookies in years. I certainly didn't think of them in recent years and think to ask my Grandmother about how she made them or look for a recipe. Now that is among the many things I regret not asking her about. I suppose it is always the case that once someone is gone, we think of a million different things we wished we has said or asked. I consider myself very lucky, in that in my last visit with my Grandmother, who had Alzheimer's, she was having a relatively "good" day, and I know that she knew who I was, I got to hear her say she was proud of me, and I told her that I loved her. So it isn't the "big" things I regret not talking to her about. I find, instead, it is the little things. The seemingly meaningless things that become important when you realize how they help you hold onto something. The things like Tea Cake Cookies.
What got me thinking about Tea Cake Cookies was making Madeleines (which of course, are themselves tea cakes) and Financiers. For Christmas, two people gave me Madeleine pans (which had been on my list) - those pans with the shell shaped molds. I was excited to try them out, after having taken a French baking class in which we made both Macarons (not to be confused with Macaroons, but that is another blog post altogether) and Financiers (similar to Madeleines).
The first time I made Financiers in the Madeleine pan, I put them in the oven after all of the prep work and took my dog Mumble out for a short walk while they were baking. When I opened the door to come back inside, I was hit very suddenly and powerfully by the smell of the cookies baking. Have you ever been hit with a smell and instantly had a strong memory that just completely overwhelms you? It was like that for me at that moment. Those baking cookies smelled sweet and buttery, and suddenly I was standing in my Grandmother's kitchen after school and she was taking cookies out of the oven.
That moment started my current quest to discover the recipe for Grandmother's Tea Cake cookies. I will document here the steps on that journey as I research the history of tea cakes, try out recipes, and explore the memories of these delicious cookies with my siblings and cousins, and I hope that you enjoy following along the way.
