The delight of buttery melt of Russian tea cakes in your mouth is unparalleled. Russian tea cakes are basically cookies which are often baked during Christmas and special occasions in the United States of America. Inspired mainly by the rich aromatic tang of English pastry baked during Middle Ages, Russian tea cakes are now authentic American delicacy.
The amazing zest of these little cookies is mainly due to the aroma of melted butter, crushed nuts and essence of vanilla. You can make your own homemade Russian tea cakes within an hour. Here is an easy Russian tea cake recipe for the cookie lovers.
Health Benefits
Though incredibly tasty, the mouth-watering Russian tea cakes are relatively high-calorie snacks. One little Russian tea cake contains 130 calories, 55g sodium, 2g fat, 13g sugar and only 2g protein and 1g fiber. You cannot really call it healthy but the absence of saturated fat and cholesterol makes it a good snack. Nevertheless, the high sodium and sugar content do not make Russian tea cakes healthy. But you can have these incredible butter delights occasionally.
Ingredients
cup of melted butter: 1
cup of castor sugar: 1/2
Vanilla extract: 1 tsp
cups of all-purpose flour: 2 1/4
cup of desired finely chopped nuts: 3/4
tsp of salt: 1/4
powdered sugar to roll the cookies
How To Make Russian Tea Cake
- Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
- Mix 1 cup of melted butter, ½ cup of castor sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract in a mixing bowl.
- Add 2 ¼ cups of all-purpose flour into the bowl and give it a good stir.
- Add ¾ cup of chopped nuts and ¼ tsp of salt into the mixing bowl and stir it well till the dough holds together.
- Once the dough is ready, take a small portion of dough and make 1-inch balls.
- Place all the cookie balls on a cookie sheet that is ungreased 1-inch apart.
- Place the cookie sheet in the preheated oven and let it cook for twelve minutes. Make sure cookies do not turn brown.
- Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and transfer the cookies to a wire rack in order to let them cool a little bit.
- Roll the cookies in powdered sugar and then let them cool and then roll them in powdered sugar once more.
Trivia
Interestingly, Russian tea cakes have no association with Russian cuisine. Many speculations have been made about the origin of these cookies but there is no real evident found supporting the speculations. It is speculated by some that these delicate cookies either inspired from Eastern European shortbread cookies or inspired by the cookies served beside Russian Samovars or tea urns. However, these cookies became so popular by the 20th century that they are served in America during special occasions like Christmas and weddings. These little cookies have resemblance with butterballs, snowball cookies, Mexican wedding cookies and also with Italian wedding cookies.