These breads contain flour, sugar, milk, baking powder, dried fruit, and flaked coconut, as well as ground flaxseed. This is because the test cook was out of raw eggs.Mary Therese Biebel Times Reader
“It’s pretty good,” reporter and taste tester Jen Rahn Andes said as she sampled the Times Leader Test Kitchen’s Gander Tea Bread. “It reminds me of scones.”
Reporter Margaret Roarty said: “The flavor is good.” “It goes well with hot coffee.”
“It’s okay,” said page designer Ashley Bringman. “That’s not my thing.”
Not everyone was a fan of Gander Tea Buns, at least the ones I baked this week (and hmmm, maybe that’s because of the powdered flaxseed I used; more on that later). It’s hard not to like the story behind it. .
This recipe was created on Sept. 11, 2001, when 38 planes were diverted to her far-flung hometown after terrorist attacks shut down U.S. airspace. I learned this from Charlotte Gushue.
In a 2021 (20th Anniversary) article in the Christian Science Monitor, Charlotte, at her mother’s direction and not entirely voluntarily, gave her toys to comfort the children of stranded passengers. I remember donating some.
She then helped her mother bake fresh homemade bread to feed passengers, which she believes influenced her decision to become a professional baker.
I would like to thank Charlotte’s family and other Newfoundland residents who fed, sheltered, comforted, ran errands and cared for the pets of the nearly 7,000 air passengers stranded in Newfoundland for five days. I have a newfound interest in reading about people like .
I had no idea of their generosity until I learned that Come From Away, a touring musical about that time and place, would be performed four times at the Scranton Cultural Center from April 5th to 7th. There wasn’t. As a preview of the performance, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Turf, a former stranded passenger who later founded Pay It Forward 911, a charity that encourages kindness to strangers.
Twelf, who appears on the show and has seen it 80 times, says her favorite part is when the characters start singing a song that turns into a prayer for peace in several languages. Sounds good to me.
Now, what if you don’t mind switching gears from lofty themes like world peace to mundane themes like my efforts in the test kitchen? There were a lot of eggs in the fridge, but… During this post-Easter week, all eggs were either hard-boiled or preserved in the form of leftover hrduka (see Mark’s April 3 Test Food column for more information on this ethnic delicacy) .
Since I didn’t have raw eggs on hand, I decided to try using minilistbaker.com instead. For each egg, I mixed 1 tablespoon of flaxseed powder and 2.5 tablespoons of water and let it sit for 5 minutes before adding it to the dough.
Mark warned me not to do that (“Go to the store for more eggs,” he advised), but I wanted to know how flaxseed worked. It is. I think the finished buns were very delicious. So did my mom, and Jen and Margaret in the newsroom, and finally Mark when he tried. My neighbor Roger found the bread I had left on the balcony and ate it. “It was delicious!” he said. Music was playing in my ears.
Here’s a recipe for tea buns, courtesy of Charlotte Gushue of Gander, Newfoundland.
ganda tea buns
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 pound butter (2 sticks)
1/2 cup sugar
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons custard powder (or cornstarch or instant vanilla pudding)
1/3 cup chopped dried apricots
1/3 cup mixed fruit
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
Combine first 6 ingredients in a bowl. Crumble together and add the apricots and mixed fruit. Make a well and add the eggs and milk. Mix gently. Spread out on a floured surface. Cut and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes.
