My Mother's Cookies or the Quest for Tea Cakes

Recently Carrie, Alison, Vicki and I have been trying to find my mother's tea cake recipe, and I understand that there was a bit of a "discussion" with their Uncle Ken about whether or not she made cookies. Let me set the record straight - she did. (sorry, Ken - maybe she had stopped by your "only child" days, but she made them plenty of times!) These are the homemade cookies that I remember.

SUGAR COOKIES: When I was a little girl, Mother & I always made cookies at Christmas time, and one of my favorites were plain old sugar cookies. Of course, my reason for loving those the best was because she would let me decorate them. I remember cookie cutters of Christmas trees, stars, and a gingerbread man shape. I am sure there were more, but those I remember. We would also cut out circles with the ring from a mason jar lid. Mother would mix up an icing using a little melted butter with powdered sugar, and if it got too thick, she added a few drops of water. Then she would divide it up in little bowls, and add a couple of drops of food coloring to each one. She would give me a butter knife and "sprinkles" to decorate the top. I loved to add the sprinkles and to make faces and buttons on the gingerbread men. (I don't remember ever making real "ginger" bread men, just the sugar cookies shaped like gingerbread men) When we still lived in Concord, Mother and Daddy would have "socials" after church on Sunday nights sometimes where the teenagers from Mt. Olive would come over and play games. I remember making sugar cookies for those, Christmas time and other times too. BTW - these cookies were often burned around the edges too; part of the "art" of applying the icing was hiding the burned edges!

ICEBOX COOKIES: These were the famous Grandma Sanvidge icebox cookies. Ken doesn't want to remember them because he didn't like them! No one in our house liked them except for Daddy and me. VERY rarely Mother would make up a batch. You shaped the dough into a long roll, wrapped it in foil and put it in the frig overnight before cutting it into slices and baking them. Still my very favorite cookie!

FRUIT CAKE COOKIES: My Mother's favorite cookie and my least favorite! I think the recipe is probably the same as the sugar cookie, but I'm not sure. Then she would add chopped pecans and pieces of candied fruit (the kind you put in fruit cakes) to the batter and spoon it onto cookie sheets before baking it. Something about those little pieces of candied fruit that I didn't like - I never liked fruit cake either (and yes, she made those too).

I believe that my mother's own quest for tea cakes came later in life, after she had grandchildren. I don't ever remember making them or even hearing her talk about them when we were growing up, but after I reached adulthood, she started talking about them. I think one of her older sisters (probably Sister, Sara or Janie) made them, and she wanted to make them too, but didn't want to admit to them that she didn't know how! She began making them, and like you girls remember, always had them in the jar for y'all, always burned around the edges. Mrs. Prosser made a wonderful tea cake and would bring her some a lot of times later in her life - I think that was after y'all were all grown, or at least past the age when she would share her cookies with you.

While I'm on the subject of her baking, my Mother used to bake a lot more than she did in later years. She used to make fruit cobblers a lot - those were a cheap dessert I guess when we were growing up. She would make fruit cakes and give them away a Christmas. Occasionally, she made pound cakes (a favorite of hers) but never thought hers were as good as her sisters, so didn't make them often.

We all joke about my Mother's lack of cooking skills, and I'll be the first to say, she was not the best cook in her bunch of sisters by a long shot. She didn't experiment; she kept things basic, although she was never one to worry about "substituting" often with disasterious results! However, although I never really had a cooking "lesson" from my Mother, I guess I learned some things from her, though not how to make TEA CAKES!