A reader was searching for Grandma Himel’s Tea Cake recipe and couldn’t find it and I realized that was another one lost from the previous website. Here’s the old blog post and recipe with new pictures.
Tea Cakes
My great grandma was Grandma Stroud . . not Grandma Himel. She always had tea cakes. I have tried every tea cake recipe I find hoping to duplicate my great grandma’s tea cakes. I probably don’t even remember at this point what they tasted like but I have this thought in my head about them. My lovely friend from south Louisiana, Nita, shared a recipe from one of her neighbors from their Grandma Himel. I immediately made them and they’re very, very close to my great grandma’s . . as close as I’ve come.
When I made them, I halved the recipe. For three eggs, when halving the recipe, I use 1 large egg and 1 small (Bantam) eggs. The recipe calls for vanilla butternut extract. I’d never heard of that and used clear vanilla. Nita said she ordered the vanilla butternut extract from Amazon.
Note: I did find something called Burnt Sugar Flavor and used that.
Burnt Sugar Flavor
Ingredients:
6 cups flour
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups sugar
2 sticks butter or margarine
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 oz. vanilla butternut extract
Directions:
Melt butter. Add extract, eggs, sugar, and milk. Mix well. Stir in flour and baking powder. Roll out, cut with cookie cutter. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350° for 13 – 15 minutes. They will not be brown but a light yellow.
Note: When rolling, I roll mine a bit thicker than 1/4″. They can be rolled as thick as you’d like but you may have to adjust the baking time for thicker cookies. I rubbed the top, before baking, with a little milk and then sprinkled sugar on top.
Tea Cakes
I love the set of biscuit cutters for cutting things like this.
The cookies are a bit like a biscuit but sweeter.
Tea Cake
Sharon Downey says
Instead of just saving a recipe to the website we each need to write them down and keep for our records. I speak from experience having had my own trials in the past with computer bugs. Those recipes are to precious to chance losing. It’s great that there are people willing to share them but that should not be your only record.
Stephani in N. TX says
We all have our favorite of Grandma’s cookies. Mine is a twisted butter cookie from my Yia-Yia called koulourakia. Her cookie jar was never-endingly full. Question – two actually. Want to knit a chemo cap for a dear person. Any ideas on yarn? Not too itchy, not as hot as her wig. Another question came up on my FB crowd. Do chicken owners rinse eggs or just wipe them off and do they need refrigeration?
Angie says
These cookies look so yummy! Can you tell me more about the Butternut extract, and do you think it’s important to the flavor of the cookie. I’ve never heard of it before.
Robin says
Could you use plain vanilla instead or something else?
Mel Meister says
I love butternut flavor. I think I get mine from King Arthur, either that or Prepared Pantry.
Beck G in NC says
Yes King Arthur Flour carries that extract. They are a wonderful employee owned company.
Susan ~ Patchkat says
I cannot even begin to tell you how many tea cake recipes I have tried to duplicate the tea cakes Ernie’s Granny Neves always made. Since I never tasted hers, I don’t really have a point to shoot for, but he keeps telling me which ones are close and we improvise from there. Thank for posting a new one to try.