Almond Tea Cookies

Cookie Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons almond extract

Icing:
2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoon milk (or water)
4 teaspoons almond extract

Directions: Preheat oven to 375°F. Beat together Butter and Sugar until light and fluffy. Add Egge and Almond extract, beating until light. Add Baking Powder and salt and mix well. Add half of flour, and when that is mixed in, add the other half. Using a small scoop, place batter on parchment paper lined Cookie sheet. Bake for 9 minutes or just as the bottoms have a hint of browning. Remove from oven and let cookies rest on baking sheet for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To Ice: In a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, milk and almond extract - until smooth. Then smooth icing onto the top of each cookie and let set for 10 minutes, or until hardened. store in a cool place in an airtight container until ready to serve. Makes three dozen cookies.

We had these at an 18th Century tea and they were a big hit.

Hasty Pudding

4 ¼  cups water

1 cup oatmeal ( or rye flour or cornmeal)

½ teaspoon salt

Milk or cream to taste

Sugar, molasses, maple syrup or honey for sweetening.

 Bring a quart of water to boil in a pot. Remove from the fire. In a separate container, mix ¼ cup of water and 3 tablespoons of the oatmeal together.  Add the oatmeal mixture and salt to the pot of water. Place back on fire. Slowly add the remaining oatmeal ¼ cup at a time, stir to blend, and bring pot back to boil before adding the next bit of oatmeal. This should take about a half-hour. Serve hot with milk or cream, butter and sweetner to taste.

Take leftover mush and chill. Slice and dust with flour to fry in butter. Serve with your choice of syrup or honey.

This recipe is from the 18th century, adapted with modern measurements.

Bordentown Candied Peel

This confection was very popular in the eighteenth century.

Ingredients
2 cups of grapefruit, lemon, or orange peels,
packed
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
fine sugar

Instructions
Remove the peel in 1/8- to 1/4 inch-wide strips. Avoid the bitter white pith. Place the peel in a stainless steel saucepan and cover with cool water. Boil slowly for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, let stand for 5 minutes, and drain. Repeat this process twice more. Cook the sugar in the water until it dissolves. Add the peel and cook until the syrup is almost absorbed and the peel is translucent

Shake fine sugar onto waxed paper and roll the peel in the sugar until it is well coated. Dry on a wire rack.

Notes
This was given to me by our neighbor at Bordentown in 2007 and was a big hit with those of us who were the

Beer Bread

12 Ounces of beer, any variety except non-alcohol

2 Tablespoons of something really sweet (sugar, honey, fruit juice concentrate, etc.)

3 Cups of self-rising flour

   (For every cup of flour, use 1 ½ tsp baking powder and ½ tsp salt to make it self rising)

Mix the ingredients together. Pour the batter into a lightly greased, pre-heated loaf pan and bake at 400° for 50 minutes (maybe more depending on your oven). The recipe makes one loaf of bread suitable for 2-3 people. If plan for more servings, adjust the ingredients proportionately. This bread tastes best fresh from the oven but is also quite good cold. It will be a rather dense bread with a texture more like muffins or corn bread. I highly recommend using a strong porter or stout (like Guinness or Murphy’s) for the beer and honey as your sweetener.

I've also done this recipe in the fire at 18th century encampments. For that purpose the only really questionable ingredient in the recipe above is the self-rising flour. Self-rising simply means that the flour already has baking powder mixed with it.

 In the period, potash, a.k.a. pearlash (a kind of salt made from refined wood ash) was used to aid the rising process. Baking soda is the modern equivalent of potash, and baking powder is essentially baking soda with some compound starches added as a souring agent.

 In other words, baking powder provides basically the same function as the salt or wood ash by-products but is easier to come by today. Baking powder was first discovered in the late 1700s, but didn’t come into widespread use until around the 1830s