Happy 4th of July, folks!

I hope you’re all enjoying a relaxing day with family, friends, and good food. I definitely am! We’re off visiting my husband’s side of the family today, and we’ve got a weekend in Indiana planned with my family next week. In fact, a visit to my family in June gave me the idea for today’s post, which is dedicated to Felicity Merriman, the American Girl doll inspired by the American Revolution.

I first got my Felicity doll when I was just a little girl (six? maybe seven years old?). We did EVERYTHING together, so much so that I’m actually surprised she survived my childhood in one piece. But survive she did, and my mom kept her safe in storage for years until I had a house with room to store her. Last month, I finally got to take her home! As I went through her box of accessories, it got me reminiscing about all the good times we had. The funny thing is, I had been stressing about what book to feature on the blog in July, but when I realized that my scheduled posting day fell on Independence Day…well, a Felicity recipe was just too perfect to pass up!

For today’s recipe, we’re recreating teatime at Miss Manderly’s house from the book Felicity Learns a Lesson. In the story, Felicity must learn to balance her patriot sympathies with her new friendship to a loyalist named Elizabeth. At teatime, Felicity has to choose between drinking tea (which her family is boycotting) or refusing and thereby endangering her friendship with Elizabeth. Her quick solution is awfully clever, and I want to commemorate it today by recreating Miss Manderly’s tea table: an inviting spread of queen cakes, hard biscuits, and black tea.

I used an almond variation on my own sugar cookie recipe for the hard biscuits, but it was trickier to find a queen cake recipe. I wanted an authentic colonial recipe, but it also had to have instructions that would make sense in a modern kitchen. In my search, I stumbled across the blog The English Kitchen, which sounded promising. The recipe there was perfect: quick, easy, remarkably tasting…and not much altered from the colonial version! The only change I made was adding nutmeg, since some variations on queen cakes call for mace (which comes from the same plant), and bits of brown spice are clearly visible in the queen cake illustration in Felicity Learns a Lesson.

Then came time for the finishing touch: a custom tea blend! It’s been a long time since I’ve created one of my custom Adagio teas, so it was fun to stretch my tea-making muscles again. This red, white, and blue inspired blend is flavored with raspberries, blueberries, and almonds to make a rich tea with a distinct hit of juicy berries. I love it with a little sugar and milk.

So fire up some fireworks and put on the kettle. It’s time for a Patriot Tea Party! 😀

NOTE: This post is not sponsored by or affiliated with Mattel, Pleasant Company, or the American Girl brand.

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A Patriot Tea Party: Almond Cookies, Queen Cakes, and Tea

“Oh, these are queen cakes!” said Annabelle as she took a small cake filled with currants from the plate. “I have heard they are a favorite of the queen of England.”
Miss Manderly held the plate of biscuits and queen cakes out to Felicity. Felicity took the smallest biscuit she saw. Miss Manderly smiled. “A wise choice. Hard biscuits don’t shed crumbs the way cakes do,” she said.

— Felicity Learns a Lesson

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INGREDIENTS:

• For the Cookies
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • 2 tsp almond extract
• For the Queen Cakes
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp butter, softened
  • 1/3 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • zest of 1 lemon
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 1/2 tsp milk
  • 3/4 cup currants
• For the Patriot Tea
  • Order here!

      

Makes 48 cookies and 36 queen cakes

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. 1. FOR THE COOKIES: Preheat oven to 325°. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.
   2. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together the butter and sugar on medium speed until smooth. Beat in the egg, milk, and vanilla until combined.
   3. Gradually beat in the flour mix until just combined, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl if necessary.
   4. Gather the dough together into a ball. Separate into two smaller balls of equal size. Flatten into 4-inch disks and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Chill for 30 minutes or until firm but not hard.
   5. On a well-floured surface, roll out 1 disk until it reaches 1/8-inch thickness. Cut 10 circles from the dough using a 2¾-inch cookie cutter and place them evenly apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Shape the scraps into another 4-inch disk. Rewrap the disk and place it in the fridge.
   6. Bake the cookies for 12 minutes or until the center is set. Gently transfer to a wire rack to cool using an offset spatula (do this immediately, since the cookies can begin to stick to the sheet as they cool).
   7. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 with your 2nd disk of dough.
   8. Roll out, cut, and bake scraps until you have 48 cookies total.

      

   9. FOR THE QUEEN CAKES: Preheat oven to 350°. Spray a 24-mold mini bundt pan and set aside. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar with a hand mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the lemon zest and nutmeg. Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir to combine. Stir in the currants. Stir in the milk.
   10. Fill the molds of the bundt pan half full and bake for 10-12 minutes or until cakes spring back when firmly tapped with a finger. Transfer cakes to a cooling wrack. Respray pan, fill with the remaining batter, and bake. Allow all cakes to rest on the wrack for 20 minutes or until completely cool.
   11. If desired, you can trim the bottom of the cakes so they sit flat, but they should sit pretty flat anyway if you let them cool right side up.

       

   12. Brew a pot of Patriot Tea and serve your cakes and cookies at 4th of July festivities!

       

 

 

Check out my other red, white, and blue recipes! 🙂

Healthy Dessert Pizza

Fairy Dust Star Cookies from Peter Pan

Cinnamon S’more Mini Baked Alaska

Arrietty’s Mini Cherry Cakes

Uncle Monty’s Coconut Cake

Red Shirt Fruit Salad

 

 

Want to suggest the next Book of the Month? Email me here!