I have been wasting no time in the kitchen this holiday season and it’s only just begun. Cooking and baking up one joyous storm after another while humming various bits of different Christmas songs.
Though I may not remember all of the lyrics to the classic holiday songs I can assure you that one thing I will not forget is how delicious my favorite holiday treats Russian tea cakes.
These little dome shaped delights are also known as Mexican wedding cakes or Snowball cookies just to name a few. Whatever you choose to call them they are fantastic. The recipe I followed is from smittenkitchen.com.
These are a delicate shortbread cookie loaded with finely ground pecans and coated in powdered sugar for added sweetness.
Ingredients: (yields about 4 dozen)
1 cup of butter, room temperature
2 cups of powdered sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 cups of flour
1 cup of pecans, toasted and finely ground
To begin I used an electric mixer and beat 1 cup of butter until light and fluffy.
I added 1/2 of a cup of powdered sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. I beat until incorporated.
Then I added 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of pecans. I mixed until combined.
I divide the dough in half and shaped each half into a ball. Then I wrapped each ball separately in plastic wrap. I refrigerated the dough for 30 minutes.
While the dough chilled I preheated the oven with my bread stone to 350 degrees. Then I filled a pie plate with the 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar. I set it aside for later.
Once the 30 minutes was up I took one ball of dough out of the refrigerator and shaped the dough into 2 teaspoon sized balls.
Then I spaced out twelve cookies at a time onto the bread stone. I baked the cookies for about 18 minutes and the bottoms were golden brown and the tops were pale golden. I let the cookies cool for 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes I gently tossed the warm cookies into the pie plate with the powdered sugar until completely coated. Then I transferred the coated cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely. I repeated the procedure with the rest of the dough.
I sifted the remaining powdered sugar over the cookies before digging in.
