Russian Tea Cakes

December 19, 2016 by Kathy D 19 Comments

It is time for holiday baking to commence!

Russian Tea Cakes are something my mother baked for Christmas when I was a child. Her cookbook named them “Nut Butter Balls” (this was published during the Cold War…I am sure anything named “Russian” got a new name!). They are also called Mexican Wedding Cakes.

I usually only make them for Christmas. It keeps them special.

Russian Tea Cakes

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts
Confectioner’s sugar (for rolling after baking)

Cream butter/margarine with sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in flour, walnuts, and vanilla extract. Wrap dough in plastic wrap (I shape into a rectangle, maybe an inch in height), and chill for at least 2 hours. (I mix up the dough after dinner, and don’t roll the dough balls until the next day.)

Roll dough into balls that are a little less than 1 inch in diameter (if you chilled the dough in a rectangle, you can now slice the rectangle into small cubes to be rolled – easy peasy).

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 – 15 minutes (bottoms should be golden, tops might be just starting to crack).

Let cool on pan 5 minutes, then start rolling them individually in Confectioner’s sugar and placing them on wax paper to cool.

Let cool on wax paper several hours.

Roll them in Confectioner’s sugar again, as you are placing them into the storage container. (And I re-roll them in Confectioner’s sugar as I put them out on Christmas day – just so they look pretty!)

Note: You can substitute most any kind of nut. I have made them with pecans, I am sure I have had the same recipe shaped like crescents made with almonds.

Here is what a batch of dough looks like on a sandwich plate:

Here’s a dough ball I saved for one of the offspring:

This dough has no egg in it, it was always considered safe to eat.

AND…here is the new warning label (new this year – after the e-coli outbreak caused by one specific flour processing plant in July 2106) that tells me that I should not eat raw flour products: