Russian Tea Cakes
Every Christmas we pull out our favorite hand-written cookie recipes from an old box we keep in the pantry. Many of these recipes are now over half a century old – and the paper they are written on is getting torn and faded with use. Time to commit some of these recipes to an electronic format – like this recipe for Russian Tea Cakes.
Russian Tea Cakes are sometimes called Mexican Wedding Cookies, although the Wedding Cookies traditionally use pecans. You easily can substitute pecans or almonds depending on what you have on hand.
Many recipes call for ½ cup of the powdered sugar. This is purely a matter of taste.
Ingredients
- 2 sticks (1 Cup) unsalted room temperature butter
- 1 cup toasted walnuts (finely chopped)
- 1/3 cup (packed) confectioner sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/8 cup all-purpose flour
Extra confectioner sugar for dusting.
Directions
Lightly toast the walnuts on the stove top. Let cool and then finally chop them. Dump the butter, walnuts, sugar, salt, vanilla and flour into a mixing bowl. Combine the ingredients by hand until the dough comes together. Shape into balls (about 1 inch) or roll into logs and arrange them on a parchment lined sheet pan.
Bake in a 350 oven for 15 – 20 minutes until lightly golden . Let cool for about 5 minutes and toss in powdered sugar. Place back on the sheet and let the cookies cool completely. Then do a final dusting with confectioner sugar to give them the ‘snowy’ look.
