Some of my favorite hours have always been in the kitchen.  As a small child, I spent a good deal of my childhood in fields and woods.  If I wasn’t there, I was probably playing in a barn . . .If I was in the house, I was most likely in the kitchen.  

The women in my family cooked.  In those days, processed food was in its’ early stages.  I never saw things like “instant potatoes”, cake mixes and “Hamburger Helper”.  Of course, this meant someone was usually in the kitchen . . . peeling potatoes, often.

The  yellow and chrome kitchen table, in my grandmamas’ house,  was the best place I knew of to tell secrets or  to solve a mystery. I also could count on someone being in the kitchen, in the circumstances of bee stings and skinned knees-or when I couldn’t button a dolls’ dress. “The heart of the home”-was always in the kitchen. Maybe my love affair with kitchens spawned from those days. . . when Mama, Grandmama, and Aunt Josie were making things like banana pudding or rolling out dough for chicken and pastry.

Why cookies, of all things, have remained such a plight for me, is beyond me, but for the love of a grandchild,  I will not give up.   I can at least say now, I can bake “tea cakes” .  . .and Lyla loves them. 

“Tea cakes”  are a shortbread type of cookie, but more “cake like” in texture. They are often paired with iced tea, in the south, but they go very well with coffee, too.  They are a simple concoction of a very few ingredients, unlike “store bought” cookies, that lists dozens of artificial substances, and do not lend the heavenly aroma to the kitchen, as the tea cakes do.

1 cup soft butter

1 1/2 cup of sugar ( I tend to spill just a little sugar more, in the bowl)

1 tsp vanilla  ( I spill vanilla too)

2 eggs

1/4 cup of milk

3 cups self-rising flour

Cream butter,  sugar, eggs and vanilla together.  Add flour and milk, slowly.  Form dough into 2 loaves, and chill in freezer for about 20 minutes.  By hand, form the chilled dough into small balls.  Bake at 375 degrees, on a lightly floured cookie sheet-(I use a pizza stone), for ten minutes.  Do not brown the cookies.  This will make about forty cookies.  I have halved the recipe, successfully.  The cookies keep well for several days.

You will not need to ring a dinner bell, when tea cakes are cooking.