Old-Fashioned Tea Cakes

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These old-fashioned tea cakes, or white cookies, are just like grandma use to make. They are shaped like a cookie, but taste almost like a cross between a lightly sweetened biscuit and a cake.

The recipe for these was on a card marked mama’s white cookies, but I think they are more commonly referred to as Southern tea cakes. This old fashioned recipe uses lard, but you can use shortening instead.

Either way, they are tender and delicious. They are lightly flavored and really simple, but still so good.

The story goes they are less sweet because they are meant to be eaten under a shade tree with a glass of sweet tea. It’s a pretty picture if nothing else.

My family did enjoy them under a shade tree, but no sweet tea was in our glasses. We are just far enough of the Mason-Dixon line for sweet tea.

We enjoyed both the kind that were rolled in pumpkin spice and sugar and those that were glazed. They cookies themselves are so simple, you could customize them to any flavor combination you would like.

Tips and Tricks

This recipe works great with buttermilk or sour milk. To make sour milk, add a Tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk and let sit for about 10 minutes.

The mixture will curdle a bit. That is okay, go ahead and use it all.

If you want, you can roll each ball of dough in cinnamon sugar before flattening and baking. You can also use a mixture of pumpkin pie spice and sugar for even more flavor.

Try adding lemon or orange zest to the cookies for a citrus tones. You can also experiment with different extracts for other flavor combinations.

The tea cakes are good plain, but we like adding a simple glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla, and a few drops of milk. Either dunk the top of the cookies in the mixture or drizzle it over the top of them.

Pro tip: Glaze the cookies on a wire rack over a sheet pan. That way the drips are all on the sheet pan and the clean up is easy.

You can also roll out the dough and cut it using cookie or biscuit cutters. Increase the flour to 8 cups to make the dough stiff enough to roll out and chill for 30 minutes. 

Pro tip: They make silicone molds that you can pour melted lard into and turn it into sticks. That makes it as easy to use as a stick of butter!

More Recipes to Try

If you like to recipes using lard, you are going to love lard chocolate chip cookies. Or my great-grandma’s super tender lard pie crust.

Of if you like Southern desserts, you make like baking a southern caramel cake. Sweet potato baby cakes are another tasty option or a pig pickin’ cake with mandarin oranges and pineapple.

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