Are They Russian? Mexican? All I Know Is That They Taste Good!

Some call these cookies Russian Tea Cookies. Some call them Mexican Wedding Cakes. I call them buttery balls of deliciousness. That explode. In your mouth. It's awesome!

I got the recipe from the Penzey's Spices catalog. It was sent in by someone from New Jersey. Once I made the cookies and tasted them, I was shot back to my childhood when my grandmother would bake these. She added nuts, I think. I could be wrong. I have been before.

Unfortunately, I didn't do much picture taking with these. It was into the mixer and out to the pan and that was really it. Sorry. I promise more pictures on everything else. Or rather - I'll try.

The recipe is very easy and you get a TON of cookies out of one batch. I did a double batch and ended up with about 80 cookies.

Recipe:
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cream the butter until fluffy using an electric mixer. Reduce the speed of the mixer and add 1/2 cup of powdered sugar. Mix until incorporated. Blend for 5 minutes on low. Add the flour, salt and vanilla to the mixer bowl and once moistened, increase the mixer speed to medium to make a stiff dough.

Once the dough is stiff, break off small pieces and form into one inch round balls. Place on a cookie sheet (greased, lined, whatever. I used foil lined pans). These cookies don't expand much so you can get a good number of them onto a pan.

Bake for about 12 minutes. You want to watch them very carefully and take them out when they just begin to get a touch of color. Don't over bake them. You don't want them to get brown.

While the cookies are baking set up a "sugaring" station. I poured some powdered sugar into a shallow dish and set up a cooling rack and a trivet for the hot pan to rest on.

When the cookies are done, put the hot pan on the trivet. Carefully remove cookies one by one (I actually did about 5 cookies at one time because they fit in my dish) and cover them with powdered sugar. Roll with a spoon to make sure that every surface is coated. Remove them to the cooling rack and continue the sugaring until all of the cookies are coated.

These cookies are so quick and easy to make you can whip them up to impress people with freshly made, home made, amazingly yummy dessert cookies.

As there are no eggs in the recipe, this is a safe cookie for someone with an egg allergy. It's also nut free. 2 major food allergies covered! Excellent!

The cookie is very flaky, tender and surprisingly delicate. The buttery taste makes this a fantastic cookie to have with tea or coffee. Or, really, to have any time.

Happy New Year of Baking!!
FatCat