BUCKING THE SYSTEM: LOOKING FOR REGION'S BEST TEACAKE RECIPES

Last Christmas, my editor used his weekly column to make a shameless plea for food. I'm about to do the same thing.

Everyone in the newsroom laughed at our editor, Joe Sullivan, when he held a fruitcake contest last Christmas. We thought Joe had lost it when he told readers of his love of the stuff and challenged them to send him samples of their favorite recipes for his Look! Your Name Is in the Editor's Column contest.

The laugh was on us, however, when fruitcakes started coming out of the woodwork the same day the column ran. Joe's desire for sweets was sated, and he had a veritable fruitcake bonanza for an entire week.

We didn't mind being proven wrong, though, because Joe didn't mind sharing. He was also in a very genial mood the entire length of the contest, which is always a good thing for a group of reporters.

Well, I'm going to borrow from his idea to feed a similar need I'm having, and I hope I'm half as successful as Joe was. Put simply, I WANT YOUR TEACAKES.

Ever since I was a little girl, my mother has made teacakes for us. Teacakes are, in my opinion, God's gift to good little children. They cost practically nothing to make, take very little time to cook and can make the person eating them feel young, protected and loved.

My mom uses Ma Dear's recipe from Walls, Miss., but she isn't exactly sure of her measurements. Like the good southern woman she is, she relies on instinct and a short list of ingredients to lead her to teacake heaven. Armed with only a rolling pin, Mason jar and a couple free minutes, she would lovingly make my sister and me a couple dozen of the hard, sweet cookies whenever the mood took her.

Yes, I realized I just referred to the items as cookies when their name would intimate they are cakes. In fact, that distinction has cost me several long conversations over the years.

Take, for example, my college days, when my roommates were always from urban or rich families who thought round, beige cookies could only be snickerdoodles or sugar cookies. These folks would always laugh the first time I received a care package from home filled with teacakes. However, I remember at least one roommate who would wait until I was asleep to reach over my bed for the cookie tin, dropping crumbs in my bed while she ate the cookies she had laughed at earlier in the day.

Other people hear me talking about teacakes and assume I'm actually talking about a cake. That's the conversation I had Friday, when one of my co-workers said her mother has a good tea cake recipe. I don't know what her version meant, although I know it involved about twice as many ingredients as the stuff I'm talking about.

Maybe some of you out there will be able to enlighten me.

So, here's my proposal. I think the makers of teacakes have a lost art that deserves some attention. Send me a sample of your favorite teacakes-tea cake recipes between now and noon Friday, Sept. 18, and I'll let you know which cooks really know their way around a good anytime confection.

I'm trying to educate people here, so don't be shy. To be fair, I'm not going to allow my mother to enter the contest. Everybody else is fair game.

~Tamara Zellars Buck is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.