Blog #16: Fish Bowl Discussion and "Tea Cake" Extra Credit

“Tea Cake” Extra Credit Food Explanation

I made sugar cookies cut into star shapes and decorated with yellow icing and gold sprinkles. The yellow icing is analogous to Matt Bonner’s skinny yellow mule in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hence, the yellow symbolizes burden, as the yellow mule is the beast of burden just as the black woman is in the society of the book. The yellow mule and the black woman must bear the extra weight as they support both the white man’s burden and the black man’s burden. The white man’s burden is pushed upon Janie through Joe Starks and the black man’s burden is pushed upon Janie through Logan Killicks. The gold on the icing symbolizes the money, power, glory, and excess that Joe seeks, forcing Janie to live her life as the voiceless wife of the mayor. The yellow alluding to the yellow mule (that exists in other examples of African folkloric culture) symbolizes the menial labor that Logan forces Janie to do, putting her down to the level of an animal, to the level of the yellow mule. The star that holds all of this together represents authority, particularly men’s power over women.  

Star Shaped Sugar Cookie Recipe

Total Time: 65 min

Prep: 20 min

Cook: 45 min

Yield: 22 cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 stick of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough, keep it refrigerated prior to use
• 2 sheets of wax paper (approximately 12 x 24 inches for each sheet)
• 1 small bottle of gold sugar for sprinkling (about 1/4 teaspoon per cookie)
• 1 small bottle of gold pearl sugar for cookie decoration (about 6-10 beads per cookie)
• 6 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
• 1 wooden rolling pin
• 1 star shaped cookie cutter
• 1 tube of yellow icing

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Put a non-stick piece of aluminum foil in a baking pan (similar size to the baking pan) for later use. 

Cut Pillsbury sugar cookie dough into ½ inch thick pieces; put them on wax paper.

Sprinkle some flour on the wax paper, dust the flour on the bottom and top of a cookie dough piece, and slowly press the cookie dough piece by using a wooden rolling pin until it forms approximately a round shape. Carefully transfer it to a baking pan with a sheet of non-stick aluminum foil. Place 6 pieces of cookie dough in a baking pan per batch and keep them ~2 inches apart. Bake the cookies for 14 minutes until the cookies are just barely turning brown. After the cookies are out of the oven, immediately use a star cookie cutter to firmly cut the baked cookies while they are hot and soft. Allow them to cool before removing the edges around the cookies. Repeat the process and bake multiple batches of cookies, if needed.

Put all the star cookies on a sheet of wax paper, cut the yellow icing tube and squeeze the icing onto the center of the star cookies; use a knife to evenly spread the yellow icing onto the top of the cookie. Dust the gold sugar sprinkles on top of the icing. Enjoy!