Great-Grandmother McCarrell's Tea Cakes

I was so excited when my father emailed this recipe with the subtitle "150 years old."  I've heard many stories about my great-grandmother's delicious finger foods.  It's kind of funny to hear my dad talk about how delicious her strawberry jam sandwiches were (strawberry & white bread - sans crust!).

You'll see from the rather vague recipe blow, I have a lot of experimenting to do w/ this recipe.  I believe I'll make some and test them out on family members during Christmas - hopefully they'll help me tweak.

GGma doesn't specify how much flour, she just said to use enough to make a soft dough.  I started out with 1 1/2 c., but ended up adding and probably used about 2 cups.  I ended up baking for about 10 minutes.  I increased the tempurature to 325 during the last couple of minutes. 

I also baked half the dough and chilled half.  I'll bake the chilled portion later.

I can tell you that the soft doughy portion that I just baked was delicious.  They were puffy and delicate -- a delicious cross between a cookie and a cake.

Recipe follows:

Great Grandmother McCarrell's Tea Cakes

 150 year old recipe

1/12 cups butter

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

plain four (I used AP)

Beat eggs. Add sugar, salt, soda, baking powder and vanilla.  Then add creamed butter and enough plain four to this mixture to make a soft dough.  Roll very thin and sprinkle with granulated sugar.  Cut cookies the desired size.  Bake in moderate oven (about 300).  They bake quickly.