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Blueberry Tea Cakes
4 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 6 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup sugar 11/2 cups milk 1/3 cup melted shortening 2 eggs 2 cups blueberries Mix and sift the dry ingredients, add milk slowly, melted shortening and eggs well beaten. Beat all together thoroughly, dredge blueberries with flour and fold into the batter. Fill greased gem pans three-quarters full and bake in a moderate oven for 30 minutes. Serve with stewed berries. Yield 2 dozen.
A plain baking-powder muffin batter with a generous load of fruit. Two things need attention: the vessel and the mixing instruction.
- Gem pansGem pans were heavy cast-iron muffin pans with small, deep, often oval cups. Standard 12-cup muffin tins work directly; the stated yield of two dozen means two pans.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as somewhere around 350-375F; the higher end gives more dome and colour. Cast iron gem pans should be preheated and greased; modern tins need only greasing or paper liners.
- TimeThirty minutes suits deep cast-iron gems. In a standard muffin tin at 375F these are usually done at 20 to 25 minutes, when a skewer in the centre comes out clean of batter.
- "Beat all together thoroughly"Ignore this. Modern practice mixes the wet into the dry only until the flour disappears, lumps and all; thorough beating develops gluten and gives tough, tunnelled muffins.
- ShorteningMelted shortening here means any solid fat rendered liquid. A neutral oil substitutes measure for measure; melted butter can be used for more flavour, though it carries some water and gives a slightly different crumb.
- Dredging the berriesTossing the blueberries in a spoonful of flour taken from the measured 4 cups keeps them suspended rather than sinking. Frozen berries work if floured while still frozen and folded in at the last moment.
- Baking powderSix teaspoons is at the high end even for four cups of flour. 4 to 5 teaspoons gives plenty of lift without the bitter, metallic aftertaste that excess leavening leaves.
- Stewed berriesThe accompaniment is simply blueberries cooked down with sugar and a little water until syrupy, served alongside.
"Tea cake" in American cookery of this period is a loose term covering small sweet breads served at breakfast or with afternoon tea, and here it means what we would call a muffin. The recipe belongs to the age of chemically leavened quick breads: baking powder became a reliable commercial product in the second half of the nineteenth century, and a cook could ring endless changes on one basic proportion of flour, sugar, milk, egg and fat simply by folding in fruit. Blueberries were a natural choice in the Northeast, where the wild lowbush crop was gathered and sold by the quart in summer.