I Told You So!

I told you the next thing you knew I was going to be making food posts! Our Christmas Open House is this Saturday night (If you live in Durango please swing by) and I started baking for the party last night. You might be thinking, "Jan, Did you say 'baking'? But you aren't a cook." No, a "cook" I am not. But I'm a decent baker since there's no guess work, it's all right there on the recipe. As my aunt, Pam-Pam, (who was an amazing cook) used to say, "If you can read, you can cook." I'm not so sure about that for actual cooking, but baking...absolutely. So last night was tea cake night. Tea cakes are one of the messiest, labor intensive, pain-in-the-hiney cookies you can make, but I remember making them at Christmas with my parents when I was little, so I guess that's why I want to do it every year. That, and JR must have said, "This is so much fun" at least a dozen times. Now this particular tea cake recipe was Memaw's (my mom's mom), and is so old it doesn't even have a baking temperature written on the recipe card since she made them in a wood-burning stove. (Which would have to significantly increase the pain-in-the-hineyness factor of these cookies. It's a wonder they ever got made.)

I started out trying to take pictures just like a real food blog, but that got blown out the window after the first shot.

Standard food blog shot: the ingredients (except half of them aren't even in the picture, and JR is...obviously you see where my priorities are.)


And then we'll just skip a whole bunch of steps of measuring, pouring, and mixing and we'll jump right into the rolling and cutting out.

I have to say, Harry was an amazing cookie maker last night. I'm now convinced rolling dough (for dumplings) is an inherited Chinese trait. I kept telling Harry, "Wow, This is obviously in your genes." You'll notice Harry is using Ayi's Chinese rolling pin. You'll also notice by a shot of Reed's foot that I had Reed and Kyle plopped right up on the island. Great, now I'm going to have the Board of Health after me too.


We finally had to give Reed, master of getting in everybody's business, his own dough to "play" with. Although in his mind there wasn't any playing going on...just lots of Top Chefing.


Look at the concentration on that face, making sure his cookie-cutter is in just the right place. And in classic Kyle and Reed fashion, you'll notice Kyle in the background. He was playing with the sink.

Woo-Hoo! Perfect cookie!

So after the rolling, cutting, and decorating (green sprinkles were the choice last night) the cookies go in a 350 degree oven (but I always have to call and ask my dad to make sure since, like I said, it isn't on the recipe).

And I know I'm supposed to have a picture of the finished product. Yeah, oops...forgot that. But all the boys were really busy eating the practice cookies (our first batch) for dessert last night, and said they were delicious. Plus, the first thing out of Reed's mouth this morning was "Cookie! Cookie!" All of which point to a total success in tea cake making.