Creamed Eggs

 

A depression era favorite this dish can be served as a breakfast or lunch with fruit or a salad!

• 1 1/2 cups half and half
• 1/2 tbsp herbox chicken boullion
• 6 hard boiled eggs, chopped
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1. Place the butter in a small pot and melt down on medium-low heat
2. Once melted, add flour and whisk for 1 minute
3. Slowly pour in the half and half and whisk until thickened
4. Add in the boullion
5. Chop up your eggs (if your eggs are freshly boiled, you can let them cool a little before peeling and fork-chopping) 
6. Mix in with cream mixture

Serve immediately over toast or biscuits or even noodles!

Tea Cakes

 These are what you'd get if a cookie and a cake had a baby!

• 1 cup butter softened (2 sticks)
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs room temperature
• 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Additional sugar for sprinkling

1. Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter until soft and pale yellow in color.
2. Gradually add the sugar to the butter, beating well.
3. Next, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Add the buttermilk and beat well again.
5. In a medium bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.
6. Turn the mixer down to the slowest speed and gradually add the flour and soda mixture into the creamed mixture.
7. Add in the vanilla.
8. Shape the dough into a round or rectangle, cover with plastic wrap, and chill several hours or overnight.
9. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
10. Lightly grease two cookie sheets or line with parchment (If you chill your dough overnight, remove it from the fridge about 15 minutes before rolling.)
11. Working with 1/4 to 1/3 of the dough at a time, roll dough to 1/4” thickness on a lightly floured surface.
12. Cut the dough into rounds using a large biscuit cutter or a drinking glass dipped into flour. Gather the scraps together, re-roll, and cut until all dough is used.
13. Place the rounds 1 inch apart on lightly greased cookie sheets.
14. Sprinkle lightly with additional sugar.
15. Additional sugar for sprinkling
16. Bake for 7-9 minutes or until the edges are very lightly browned.
17. Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and allow tea cakes to cool for several minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

When rolling out the dough, it’s important that it’s at least ¼” thick to give the tea cakes a “cake-y” interior texture.

To prevent the tea cakes from spreading while baking, make sure the dough is still quite cold as you roll and cut it. 

Then put the tea cakes directly into the oven to bake. 

Keep any extra dough covered in the refrigerator until needed.

Store tea cakes for 7-8 days at room temperature in a covered container.

Bacardi Rum Cake

 There was a time when alcohol was pretty much a special occasion thing and only drunks and bums drank rum- or sailors drinking Rum and Coca-Cola! This Bacardi rum cake recipe actually goes back to the 40s and was a favorite for winter evenings. Did my Mom make it? Nope! She wouldn't allow booze in her house! Even though....... Dad did sneak in cooking wine and sometimes a little real wine for cooking. Shhhh, don't tell Mom!

• 1 stick of butter
• 1 stick of margarine
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
• 1 teaspoon rum flavoring
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk

1. Cream together butter and margarine at medium speed until combined.
2. Mix in sugar a little at a time, until the mixture is light and fluffy.
3. Do not mix at high speed.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
5. Stir in vanilla and rum flavorings.
6. Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt.
7. Gently fold into the creamed mixture, alternating with buttermilk, starting and ending with flour.
8. Pour into a greased and floured tube pan.
9. Bake in a preheated oven at 325 for about one hour, until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
10. Remove from oven and glaze immediately.

Bacardi Rum Glaze

• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup Bacardi Light Rum

1. Mix butter and sugar over low heat.
2. Remove from heat and stir in Rum.
3. Pour hot glaze over hot cake in pan.
4. Leave in the pan for two hours before removing.

You should serve this with some Egg Nog at Christmas, hot spiced cider, or even cocoa!

Old Fashioned Butter Cake

This cake is best made by using gram measures to ensure accuracy. It's a delicious buttery cake that can be a show-stopper if you handle it right! Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature (except the cream), and don't spare the creaming when it comes to the butter and sugar.

• 8.5 oz heavy whipping cream (at least 35% fat)
• 10 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 cup + 6 tbsp sugar (help yourself to use Caster sugar for a more buttery cake!)
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 1/2 oz vanilla bean paste (for extra vanilla flavor, add some scraped vanilla bean)
• 9.5 oz King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour Blend OR Cake Flour (Swans Down)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 200 grams of large eggs

1. Whip the cold heavy whipping cream at medium-high speed until it holds shape (not to butter consistency) and transfer to a cold bowl and set aside in the fridge.
2. Beat the butter on medium speed until it is smooth. 
3. Sift together the flour and baking powder.
4. Whisk the eggs well to combine
5. VERY slowly add them to the creamed butter on LOW speed- go slow to avoid curdling.
6. Blend in the flour mixture on low speed, scraping as you go
7. Once all the flour is in, but not 100% incorporated, remove from the mixer and fold in the whipped cream by hand with a large spatula (not metal!) until you see no streaks of the cream
8. Divide equally in the prepared pans and smooth the top
9. Bake at 350 or 325 if using a Convection oven, for 24-26 minutes or less (test after 24) 
10. Remove and cool for at least five minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

You could frost this cake, and many people do. Me? Just let me lightly brush a ribbon of frosting around the top of the first layer, fill the center with a good, hearty jam, then powder the top of the cake.