Jan Risher: Of time travel and tea cakes

This week’s Louisiana Book News guest blogger is author and journalist Jan Risher, who writes a weekly column for The Advocate newspaper of Baton Rouge and has recently published a compilation of her columns in the book, Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers and Other Long Stories Short.

On a seemingly normal afternoon last fall, shortly after my book was released, I time traveled.

There were no blue police boxes or Scottish stones in sight. Even so, in an instant, I was 12 years old sitting on my great-grandmother’s sofa.

It was powerful stuff, and all it took was one whiff. Like magic, the aroma transported me to another time and place.

I had just walked into a gathering of friends who wanted to celebrate my new book, Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers and Other Long Stories Short. As I entered the party, a friend said, “Jan, come smell this cookie and tell me what you think.”

I thought it an odd request but was happy to comply. I took the cookie she was offering and held it to my nose. In a millisecond, I knew exactly what it was — my great-grandmother’s tea cake, her trademark, go-to-almost-cookie-but-a-little-like-hard-tack that cousins, aunts, uncles and friends have taken as sustenance the world over.

Nearly 15 years ago, I shared my great-grandmother’s beloved recipe in all its wonder and lack of precise measurements in a newspaper column. I ended up including that column and her recipe in my book (which is a collection of selected columns written over 15 years).

After a short list of ingredients, the last line of the recipe simply says, “enough flour to make a stiff dough.” Its telltale spice is nutmeg, and I suppose that’s what makes the teacakes so memorable.

I later learned that three 12-year-old girls, daughters of friends, made teacakes. Decades will pass before these girls have the capacity to comprehend the small miracle they pulled off.

The product they produced is also a testament to two of my cousins who captured my great-grandmother’s recipes years ago and made a family cookbook. They recognized at a young age the value of their grandmother’s cooking. Sheila spent hours in the kitchen with her grandmother, documenting exactly how the stuff that dreams were made.

The cookies I ate that afternoon could have easily come straight from my great-grandmother’s oven. They were identical in scent, texture and taste. Some were crunchy and some were soft. That variety is part of what made them wonderful. Every batch had an element of a surprise. I once asked my great-grandmother where she got the teacake recipe. She told me her mother taught her to make them. To put that in perspective, her mother was born in 1874 — and three 12-year-old girls made the very same teacakes.

I am grateful to all the women involved in making that moment happen, from my great-great-grandmother on down the family tree — and extending to the many beautiful flowers of friendship.

As Isaac Newton said in 1675, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I do not profess to have seen further, but I am grateful for the giants who have walked before and beside me.

In that moment of the teacake, I felt it all.

Jan Risher’s Looking to the Stars from Old Algiers and Other Long Stories Short is available at major booksellers and at www.janrisher.com.

Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.