Southfacin’ Cook,
Patsy Brumfield Brings Aunt Tonni’s Tea Cakes Back to Life
Back at least 100 years, my family and the Gervin-Scales family were close friends. A highlight of that friendship was long, leisurely visits to Mrs. Katie Scales, whose family farmed multi-acres of cotton alongside River Road in Greenwood and beyond. We called her Aunt Tonnie, but I’m not sure why.
Special fun for my sister and me was ruling over a wide wrap-around porch, shaded by huge ancient oaks. We’d spent hours in a comfortable swing, reading romance comic books of an unknown origin. Later, we spent hours in that porch swing being courted by Greenwood’s cutest teenage boys. Ah, the days.
Throughout, we were treated to Aunt Tonnie’s Tea Cakes, which she made in huge batches and kept in tins in her back porch freezer. We were free to raid those tins anytime without regard for the calories.
Every Christmas, I aim to make these cookies to share with my children and now my three grand boys, James, Henry and Robert. What fun they would have had in the Delta. Today, Aunt Tonnie is gone, buried with so many others in the family cemetery next door.
But immortality lies in the Tea Cake recipe and others I will cherish and pass along with great joy.
Aunt Tonni’s Tea Cakes
EQUIPMENT: stand or hand mixer, 2-3 baking sheets, parchment paper, cooling racks, rubber spatula, metal spatula, measuring equipment, large mixing bowl, sifter, tablespoon size scoop
INGREDIENTS
3 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups butter (room temp)
1 cup sour cream
5 eggs (room temp)
2 Tablespoons vanilla
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt
• Optional – red and green sand sugar for holidays
Preheat oven to 325.
In large mixing bowl, sift flour, soda, cream of tartar and salt. This step chiefly ensures you eliminate the lumps in the flour.
With mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Add sour cream and vanilla.
Turning your mixer on low, slowly incorporate dry ingredients, scraping down edges of the mixer bowl a couple of times to ensure that everything’s included.
On parchment lined baking sheets, scoop dough balls leaving 2-3 inches between. My large sheets are good for 13 cookies. Bake about 14 minutes until edges begin to brown. Immediately lift each cookie to a cooking rack. They will burn quickly if you’re not paying attention.
Makes about 100 cookies
NOTES:
1. This is a big recipe. Now I understand why Aunt Tonnie made these cookies really big, like 6 inches across – they took up room on her baking sheets, but I think the process might have gone faster. Anyway, plan for the full recipe to take 2-3 hours to get it all baked. A few times during the process, I put the dough into the fridge to keep it from getting too warm. For this batch of cookies, I’ve left a few plain and sprinkled the others with sand sugar for a holiday treatment.
2. Between batches, I rinse the scoop and place the lined baking sheet in the refrigerator to speed up its availability for more cookie dough. I also stagger batches to get 2 sheets in the oven at the same time. It makes timing a little crazy, but if I can do it, you can too. Just watch the cookie edges for timing to pull them out.
Photos: Patsy Brumfield
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