Tea Cakes & Mattie Banks

I was born in California, but there’s enough southern soul left in me to know tea cakes are nothing to play with. The recipe and execution need to be on point. Or else! It’s like potato salad, peach cobbler, or collard greens. Make them wrong if you want to. Your Black Girl card will be revoked and you’ll be banned from the family. Okay, slight exaggeration, but your family gathering contributions will be reduced to paper plates and chips. I’m just saying.

Now, Mattie Banks? Honey, she can bake! Mattie grew up in Montgomery Alabama and knows something about tea cakes. Except, clutch your purist pearls, Mattie took her mother’s recipe and added a dash of cinnamon, orange zest and juice to it. She’s sixteen and being inventive, so we can live with this. Other than youth, I’m not sure what inspired this creative alteration. Maybe it’s because Mattie’s sixteen, pregnant, and craving something different. She’s not only pregnant, but unmarried in the deep south Bible belt in 1955—long before single-parenting was an acceptable thing. When life becomes difficult Mattie finds herself surrounded by transcendent women. Her mother. Teachers. Relatives. They hold her up as she dares to defy the times. She’ll become an entrepreneur boldly making a living for herself and her baby. What does she sell? You guessed it. Tea cakes. Buttery. Delicious. Orange and cinnamon-scented luscious discs of goodness. She never shares her recipe, but you can read Mattie's story in The Girl at the Back of the Bus, my newest novel. If you don’t feel like reading, get the audio book and treat your ears to something sweet. Either way, come enjoy Mattie and her tea cakes.

And June R. Mays—tea cake baker extraordinaire—if you’re reading this blame Mattie, not me, for that O.J. and cinnamon twist. I’m just saying.

#thegirlatthebackofthebus

#bakingandbooks