Always Learning

Once again, the joke is on me.  After all my being so careful brewing Adagio's Assam Harmony, I find that about a heaping teaspoon for 4 minutes is just dandy, since this is a tea crafted to drink with milk and sugar.  It's lovely, a nice rounded, robust cup with a woodsy, nutty character.  I did try it with a slightly heaped teaspoon and 3.5 minutes.  Nope, so I gulped and pushed it and there it is, perfect.  A great morning or afternoon tea.  It was lovely with my orange molasses cookies.  This is a recipe from WWII when butter, sugar, vanilla and all sorts of other goodies were rationed.  I have a cake from that time, also and it is very good.

In fact, I will give you the cookies recipe right now.  When our kids were 9-10, they could make these with supervision, so they're not hard and you'll have cookies in about 35 minutes.

Ma's Molasses Cookies
325 oven

Grated  peel from 1 orange

Beat after each addition:
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup molasses - I use the darkest
1/2 teas. baking soda
3/4 teas baking powder
3/4 teas. cinnamon
1/2 teas. ginger
1/2 teascloves
3 cups flour
1/2 cup nuts

Turn out on lightly floured board and knead just a bit.
Form into two longish taller than they are wide and put on un greased cookie sheet.
If they seem a bit soft, stick pan and all in the fridge for 10-15 minutes
Bake for about 25 minutes.  They will be a  little bit soft on top but not much.
Let cool on pan for 5 minutes and then put on a rack.  Or eat from the pan.
You can slice these as you need them
You can double or triple the recipe.
If they are getting dry, put a slice of bread in with them, (or if you over-baked them.)

Molasses Cookies for Tea

This is about what it has been looking like around here, Grey sky, sullen river. But today, the sun is lighting up the trees and sparkling on the snow.

I have been noticing that our local grocery stores have been making more of an effort to stock locally grown and produced products. More fruits and veggies, even canned ones like pumpkin and tomatoes and meat, poultry and eggs. Now it is our responsibility to buy them, even if they're not a famous brand.

Our deer herd has been eating the bird seed that gets dropped, but they don't try to eat out of the feeders, even though one would be easy for them to use. For some reason the birds have all stopped coming to eat. Every last one of them.

Yesterday was a good day. I made 3 batches of bread for gifts - cherry and marzipan, chocolate chip and cherry and cheddar walnut, I have to confess I saved one of the cheese loaves for us, because I really love it. The first 2 I got out of Totally Tea Breads, which is a very small book loaded with great recipes, not only for tea breads, but spreads as well.

Ma's Molasses Cookies.
I have no idea where she got this recipe
In 35 minutes, you can have fresh cookies that are super. 325 degree oven

Using a large mixer, mix in order:

2 beaten eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup molasses

Mix together and add
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves

mix in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
the grated peel of one orange or orange oil or 11/2 teaspoon orange extract.

Dump out on floured board and knead about 1 minute, form into 2 long loaves
that fit on a cookie sheet, make them a little taller than wide and bake about 25-30 minutes.

If your kitchen is warm or just because, and the loaves are a bit soft, put the cookie pan with them in the fridge for 1/2 hour and then right into the oven.

You can slice these or just break them off and eat them. You can double the recipe with no problem. You can not add nuts, but I think the orange flavor is essential, whatever it comes from. My kids and everyone else I have ever served these to has loved them. If you make the loves small, you can slice them and add them to your next tea party. They don't keep forever and I would store them in a tightly covered tin with an orange or pieces of apple. They are wonderful with Keemun tea.

Yogi tea and cookies

I didn't really have any time for tea tasting today, but I went to my book club and got to try something new to me anyway. It was Yogi Tea's Mayan Cocoa Spice. The list of ingredients took up about half of the back of the teabag wrapping, so we'll just say there was chocolate, lots of spices, vanilla and stevia. I couldn't find tea or rooibos in the list, so I guess the roasted chicory was the tisane base. I assume the Mayan is a reference to the South American indigenous empire's use of chocolate, which was then taken to Europe by explorers

Right off the bat, I loved the smell – it was just like the dough for my great-aunt Ettie's molasses cookies, a heady mix of the round comfort of cinnamon and clove with the sharpness of dark molasses. Aunt Ettie was the only one who made these huge cookies just right. She always baked them at 500 degrees and stood in front of the oven waiting to grab them out the instant they were done. I have the recipe and I have made them a few times. They taste really good, but not like hers – I haven't had the nerve to push the heat up to 500.

Back to the tea – it smelled divine and tasted the same. Very sharply spicy and warming. The flavor was nicely rounded, but I could discern very little chocolate, despite that being one of the dominant ingredients. Perhaps the chocolate was what gave it such a rounded flavor. Unfortunately, I found the stevia made it too sweet and the flavor lingered in my mouth long after I was done with it. Probably small quibbles, but there they are.