Southern Tea Cakes

It’s sad to think about, but tea cakes are a dessert that I may have missed out on entirely if I hadn’t grown up in Dallas. In fact, I can’t recall ever meeting someone who wasn’t from the South who knew what tea cakes were — what a shame! To me, these soft, buttery, cake-like cookies are like a warm hug. For all of you sweet-but-not-too-sweet dessert-lovers out there, I’m telling you that tea cakes are your calling. They are the perfect bite when you want something to satisfy a sugar craving but don’t want the sugar rush (or the subsequent sugar crash).

There’s nothing extravagant or over-the-top about tea cakes, and they are perhaps the most unassuming-looking cookies that you’ll ever come across. But their simplicity is what makes them special. Not only are they one of those rare desserts that require ingredients you probably already have at home, they also could not be easier to make.

Families across the South have endless variations of tea cake recipes. (Jocelyn Delk Adams’ Lemon Tea Cakes are amazing.) This recipe is very simple, which means it’s an excellent canvas to add your own flair to.

Although tea cakes are an important part of Southern culture for people of all colors and creeds, many believe that tea cakes were originally made by enslaved Africans on Southern plantations. Those who worked in the big kitchens were privy to the lavish variety of desserts that the plantation owners enjoyed, although they were prohibited from partaking themselves.

Instead, they used what ingredients they had available to them — butter, sugar, eggs, and flour — to create something new. Tea cakes were created as an attempt to replicate the English loaf cakes that were most commonly referred to as teacakes — hence the name. I wonder if they knew it would go on to become one of the South’s staple sweet treats.