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Raisin Tea Ring
3 cups flour 5 tablespoons sugar 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 1/4 teaspoons salt 1/2 cup milk 3 tablespoons shortening 1 egg 1 cup raisins, washed, drained and floured 1/2 cup chopped nuts Sift the dry ingredients together; add raisins; to 1/2 cup milk add melted shortening and beaten egg; mix thoroughly and add to the dry ingredients; add more milk, if necessary, to make a soft dough; roll out lightly about 1/2 inch thick; divide into two long strips and twist together to form a ring; put into greased pan and sprinkle with a little sugar and nuts; allow to stand about 20 minutes. Bake in moderate oven 20 to 25 minutes. This is delicious served hot for breakfast or luncheon with honey or marmalade.
A baking-powder tea ring rather than a yeast one, so it goes from bowl to oven in under an hour. The dough is closer to a rich biscuit dough than to a sweet bread, and it should be handled accordingly.
- Handle it like biscuit doughThis is the hinge. There is no yeast and no gluten development wanted; mix only until the dough comes together and roll it out once. Overworking gives a tough, bready ring instead of a tender flaky one.
- Moderate oven350F. At the upper end of moderate, 375F, the ring browns a little better and the 20 to 25 minutes still holds for a single twisted ring.
- The milk is deliberately vagueThe half cup given is a starting point and the recipe tells you to add more. Expect to need something closer to two-thirds or three-quarters of a cup total, depending on your flour; stop when the dough is soft but still rollable.
- ShorteningIn a Royal book of this period this means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Melted butter works and tastes better here, since the dough is sweet and eaten warm.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to three cups of flour is heavier than modern practice, which runs about one teaspoon per cup. Three teaspoons of a current double-acting powder will lift this dough without leaving a metallic edge.
- Flouring the raisinsTossing the washed raisins in a little of the measured flour keeps them from sinking and stops damp fruit from sticking in clumps. Drain them well first or the extra water will slacken the dough.
- The 20-minute standWith a modern double-acting powder this rest is optional; it lets the flour hydrate and the surface sugar dissolve slightly. Do not stretch it much beyond 20 minutes, as the first rise of gas is spent at room temperature.
- ShapingTwo half-inch strips twisted together and joined into a circle. Pinch the ends firmly and bake on a lined sheet rather than a ring tin; the seam is the usual place for a ring to spring open.
- YieldOne ring, cutting into eight to ten wedges. Best within a few hours of baking, as chemically leavened doughs stale quickly.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like many manufacturer cookbooks of its era it works to show that its product can do quickly what yeast does slowly. The tea ring is a Central and Northern European form, a sweet enriched dough coiled or twisted into a circle and served with coffee, and is generally credited to German and Scandinavian bakers in America; the yeasted version was the usual one, and this recipe is the shortcut. The instruction to serve it hot with honey or marmalade places it in the American tradition of hot bread at breakfast, a habit nineteenth-century British visitors are frequently recorded as remarking on, and one that chemical leavening made practical for households without a standing dough.