Shrewsbury Cakes and Spice Cookies & Colonial NHP (Day 1)

For the last 12 years, there’s been a standing tradition in our house. The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies. This cookie custom began when we were stationed in the Buffalo, New York area. Instead of giving Son A and Son B’s teachers another coffee mug they probably wouldn’t use, we cooked up a kooky idea…for 12 school days leading into Winter Break, each teacher received a different baked confection. Over the years, the minions’ teachers have seriously earned something stronger than just a sugar biscuit, but we won’t get into that. (For now.)

Every Turkey-Day break since, the boys and I haul out well-worn cookbooks and sift through smudged recipe cards looking for that particular year’s line-up. Then for the next two weeks or so, the standing mixer gets its workout, while we’re taste-testing cookies. Powdered covered Wedding Cookies and hearty oatmeal cookies always top the list, but we try to spice it up a little too. Last year’s red cinnamon spritz cookies lingered in the cookie jar longer than they should’ve. Not including this year’s batches, we’ve mixed up, rolled out, and delivered a conservative amount of 3,800 hand-held, holiday edibles. (Tallying up the pounds of butter, flour, sugar and eggs we’ve gone through makes the bathroom scale groan. Gulp!)

But this year, we’re really mixing it up! Or I should say, I am mixing it up. Without a doubt, 2020 is a wonky year. Folks are staying home for obvious reasons. But let’s be honest. There’s only so many times you can stare at that one painted wall, think “I really need to touch up that bare spot,” and blissfully return to binge watching madness. So this year, we’re going on a coast-to-coast 12-day cookie road trip of sorts…a mental, momentary getaway. Since cookie making every day for almost two weeks straight is a task, we’d better get going!

First stop…Colonial National Historic Park in southeast Virginia! Colonial NHP is a 23-mile long parkway interspersed with three epic, colonial locations. It literally begins where our country’s democracy seeds were planted and ends where we gained independence from England. Historic Jamestowne to Williamsburg to Yorktown National Military Park…collectively known as the “Historic Triangle.”

Historic Jamestowne NHP

Named for England’s King James I, Historic Jamestowne is where the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery landed on May 13, 1607, with 104 men and boys from the Virginia Company onboard. In a month’s time, a triangular shaped fort was built with palisade stockade fences surrounding it. Fast forward to John Smith taking over the company and forcing the dandy English gentlemen to work (No work, no food was his motto!); the Powhatan people sharing what food they had with the Colonists; a drought followed up by a nasty winter in 1609-1610 called the “Starving Time;” and John Rolfe’s tobacco seeds becoming profitable. Let’s take a closer look at 1619…the year, not the project.

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The year 1619 is important in our nation’s history for several reasons. First, Governor Yeardley established the General Assembly, the first representative legislative body in North America. It’s the precursor to our current local, state and national elected governing bodies. In the beginning, 22 elected representatives later called burgesses, from 11 plantations, met in the original Jamestown Church. (17th Century social standards allowed only white, land-owning men to act as a burgess.) Their main order of business was deciding how much to charge for Virginia’s cash crop…tobacco. When the colonial capitol moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg in 1643, the General Assembly changed its name to the House of Burgesses. Today, visitors can check out the now fifth edition of the Jamestown Church. (The 1619 General Assembly met in the church’s third version.)

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To make the Virginia Company’s New World enterprise permanent, their recruitment department convinced 90 women to move to Jamestown to become wives. Talk about long-distance, mail-order brides! Women moved to Jamestown in earlier years, but 1619 was the year of the family. Establishing families meant sustainability and possible profitability for the money-hungry Virginia Company. These masses of migrating fair maidens made Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in North America. (Jamestown Rediscovery has an amazing exhibit about a teenage girl who never survived to see 1619. Read about Jane’s story here.)

1619 is also when approximately 20 Angolans set foot near Jamestown at Point Comfort (present day Hampton Roads) as enslaved people. They were originally kidnapped by Portuguese slave traders aboard the San Juan Bautista bound for New Spain. Privateers on two ships called The White Lion and Treasurer later stole about 60 Angolans and traded several of them for food at Jamestown. Servitude wasn’t new establishing Jamestown. Poor English laborers often took out a loan or contract to pay for their passage to the New World. Their creditors were generally wealthy gentlemen, who weren’t necessarily willing to get their hands and clothes dirty. Over a set period of time (usually four to seven years), the man or woman worked to repay their debt and was released free at the end of the contract. When tobacco became a cash crop for Jamestown’s residents, more laborers were required however. What sets the Angolans apart from these typical English indentured servants are the written records that don’t announce their release. Scholars will argue the Angolans were viewed initially as indentured servants, but the records prove otherwise.

The Colonists owe their survival to the Powhatans during Jamestown’s early years. They shared food like fish, corn, beans, squash, and deer with the English, who were still learning the ropes in this new-found wilderness. In 1609, the relationship between the English and the Powhatan took a turn for the worst. If a severe drought causing food to be in short supply wasn’t enough, demanding hungry colonists did it. Pocahontas’ kidnapping, conversion to Christianity, and marriage to John Rolfe in 1614 caused a peaceful pause for about eight years. But after years of Englishmen crowding their ancestral lands, Chief Opechancanough had enough. For the next ten years, the English and Powhatan skirmished and sparred. Peace was ultimately reached in 1632.

Today, visitors can step back into time at Jamestown Settlement, walk through reed-mat covered Powhatan homes called yehakins, and learn about this intricate culture. Jamestown Fort is recreated as well.

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Colonial Williamsburg

Heading northeast from Jamestown island on the Colonial Parkway lies Williamsburg. From 1699 to 1780, Williamsburg was the capital of the Virginia Colony. Today, it’s most notably known for the College of William and Mary, and Colonial Williamsburg, a massive 18th Century living history museum. Anyone can walk down Duke of Gloucester Street in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area. It’s easy to find yourself whisked back in time. Folks are dressed in period clothing (and visitors wanting to get in on the action). Living history trades-persons demonstrate their craft to interested guests. Gardens are open for plant enthusiasts to peruse. Horse-drawn carriages drive in front of original and reconstructed buildings. Going inside the buildings, however, requires a ticket.

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The reconstructed Capitol building is an impressive structure. Originally complete in 1704, each wing of this two-story building housed the two legislating bodies–the House of Burgesses and the Council. The Capitol was also built without fireplaces and chimneys. Henry Cary, the contractor in charge of construction, saw how fire had burnt down previous Virginia Colony capitol buildings in Jamestown. Unfortunately for the lawmakers, the spaces inside were cold and damp. In 1723, chimneys and fireplaces were added. The Capitol burnt to the ground in 1743.

Like the Jamestown Church, the Capitol was rebuilt and ready for meetings in 1753. In this second building, Patrick Henry spoke out against the Stamp Act in 1765, stating “give me liberty, or give me death!” Famous Virginians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason also discussed revolutionary ideas using Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights and Jefferson’s initial bill for religious freedom. After the Virginia capital was moved north to Richmond in 1780, the building shifted from a church to a school. In 1832, it burned again, even more than the first time. (I think their fire insurance probably wasn’t renewed after this!) About 100 years later in the early 1930’s, the third Capitol was reconstructed on the exact location with the same specifications as the original Capitol. Want to see the inside of it? Click here for a virtual tour.

We’ve spent days visiting Colonial Williamsburg. No matter how hard we tried, there just was never enough time to cram everything in. But a definite visit to the reconstructed buildings is the Governor’s Palace. It was restored at the same time as the Capitol in the 1930’s through donations from Standard Oil and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller.

Seven royal governors, a colonial mayor, and two post-colonial governors called this opulent space home from 1710 to 1780. Its last resident was Thomas Jefferson who proposed remodeling it to suite his simpler lifestyle. This never happened as the capital moved to Richmond. The building served as a colonial hospital for wounded soldiers during the Siege of Yorktown from September 28, 1781 to October 19, 1781. It’s hard to picture wounded soldiers among the redecorated extravagance. Fire, yet again, destroyed part of the Governor’s Palace on December 22, 1781. But it took the U.S. Civil War to really tear the building apart. It was literally taken down brick-by-brick for building materials!

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Yorktown Battlefield

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By 1781, the American Revolution was in its seventh year. The Continental Army was still recovering from the brutal winters in Valley Forge and Morristown a few years earlier. Fortunately for the Americans, French King Louis XVI was an ally of theirs. He and English King George III definitely weren’t on speaking terms, having declared war on one another in 1778.

I won’t go into all of the battlefield and naval maneuvers leading up to the Siege of Yorktown in September 1781. They’re all here. But through a series of smoke and mirror tactics involving enormous fake troop camps and bread ovens, George Washington and French General Comte de Rochambeau made their way south from New York to Yorktown. British General Lord Cornwallis established a headquarters there and was prepping it to become a naval base.

While 8,300 members of the British army lingered and loitered around Yorktown, about 17,600 American and French troops were waiting in nearby Williamsburg. The French Navy fleet led by Count de Grasse had already established a blockade in the lower Chesapeake Bay nearby. Cornwallis sent word he needed help from the British Navy. Both sides literally dug in through a series of trenches and tiny enclosed forts called redoubts. The most famous of these were British redoubts 9 and 10. In only 30 minutes time, 400 French and 400 Americans rushed and captured the two defenses. Only nine Americans and 15 French died in this event.

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After weeks of storming and capturing redoubts, knocking out guns, bombarding, and failed evacuation attempts across the York River, Cornwallis raised the white flag on October 17th to cease fire. On October 18th, one French, one American and two British officers met at the Moore House to agree to surrender terms. When Cornwallis pulled his troops out of Yorktown, the line of British troops stretched almost a mile long between lines of French and American soldiers.

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The remains of the American Revolution in Yorktown, some 239 years later, go beyond the piled remains of redoubts and the Surrender Field. The granite Yorktown Victory Monument, erected between 1881 and 1884, reminds us of the alliance between Washington, Rochambeau and Grasse and their monumental victory over British forces.

The Thomas Nelson, Jr. house bears physical reminders of the Siege. Embedded cannonballs and divets scar the original home of one of our Declaration of Independence signers.

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But for history re-enactors, October marks Yorktown Victory Weekend. Craftsman, weapons enthusiasts, military historians, and anyone who is just interested in colonial America onward gather together. The re-enactors’ attention to detail and dedication to staying in character is amazing! (We tried to get them out of character a few times.)

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Now that we’ve come to the end of the road for the Historic Triangle and the Colonial Parkway, let’s talk cookies! Almost every trip to Colonial Williamsburg involved a stop at Chowning’s Cider Stand for a round gingerbread cookie. There’s nothing fancy about them, but they’re moist and extremely flavorful! The CW blog features a recipe for them here.

Cookies haven’t always been what we devour today. Small baked cakes have been around for centuries in one form or another. But in colonial America, you’d hear names like Jumbals, Tea Cakes, and Shrewsbury cakes. White granulated sugar and chocolate were staples reserved for the extremely wealthy who could afford it, or to splurge on during special occasions. Average folks used molasses, honey and dried fruits to sweeten their baked goods, and jazzed the flavors up with spices like anise, caraway, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace. Leaveners like baking soda and baking powder didn’t evolve until 1846. So getting cakes to fluff up required eggs, naturally occurring yeast, caustic ingredients like wood ashes and lye (baker’s ammonia), and a lot of elbow grease!

Since today’s trip essentially starts at the beginning of our great nation, I’d be doing a great disservice to this time-frame if I didn’t serve up colonial cookies. The two featured recipes (Yep, it’s a two for one kinda day!) are along the lines of a classic shortbread using eggs, butter, sugar, flour and flavorings. Shrewsbury Cakes date back to 1602 England as a street food for a market fair of the same name. The recipe I am sharing is adapted from Bev Young’s Shrewsbury Cakes receipt in Presidential Cookies (2003). This cookie is said to be George Washington’s favorite. We can’t get more colonial than this can we?

There are many mix-in options in a Shrewsbury Cake, but I’m going simple with dried cherries, lemon zest and nutmeg. After a visit to the chill chest, the dough can be rolled and cut out. Due to the chopped cherries, I opted to roll the dough into golf-ball sized balls and press dough lightly with a flat-bottomed glass. (Don’t worry, the cherries came from Kroger not a Mount Vernon cherry tree.)

The second colonial era cookie is a molasses-based Spice Cookie, common in many homes and bake shops of the era. Extra butter, egg and molasses give this cookey a cake-like texture. Like the Shrewsbury Cake, the Spice Cookie dough needs to rest in the fridge. Chilling the butter in the dough will slow down it’s spread during the bake time. Then, simply scoop out and bake off. A lemon and powdered sugar glaze brightens up the warm cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg spices in it.

With that, I’ll wrap up Day 1 of the 2020 Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies! Tomorrow, we’re cruising south to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. See you there!

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