Russian Tea Cakes

December is all about holiday's and the family traditions we have associated with them. Christmas just wouldn't be quite the same in my house without my favorite Christmas cookie - Russian Tea Cakes. Ever since I was a little boy, I couldn't wait for my mom to mix up a batch of these sweet and buttery cookies. The hardest part about making them is not eating them right off the tray when you take them out of the oven. Whether you're baking these for jolly old Santa himself or Ebenezer Scrooge - one cookie and they'll be busting out the air guitar to "Run, run Rudolph."

Recipe Yields about 2 to 3 dozen cookies


2 sticks of very soft room temperature butter
½ cup of sifted powdered sugar
1 ½ teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
1 cup of finely crushed walnuts 
¼ teaspoon of kosher salt
2 ¼ cups of sifted all purpose flour
Additional powdered sugar for baked cookies

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and the vanilla together. Slowly add the powdered sugar and continue to mix until the butter and sugar mixture is light and fluffy. Next, add the walnuts and mix together. You can buy crushed walnuts or if you have walnut halves just fill a heavy duty zip lock bag and and crush them with a rolling pin or a heavy skillet.

Gradually add the flour to the butter, sugar, and walnuts. If you're using an electric mixer be sure to start on a low speed or else you'll have a large plume of flour erupting from your mixing bowl. Once you've mixed everything together the dough is going to be very crumbly. Take a small handful of the dough and roll into small ball shapes.No need to be exact on how big they are, just make sure they're all roughly the same size to ensure an even baking time. Place the balls of dough on an ungreased baking sheet about an inch apart from each other. Bake the cookies for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the you seem the bottom edges just start to brown. While the cookies are baking, fill a small bowl with some powdered sugar to roll the cookies in.

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, roll them in the powdered sugar and allow them to cool. The first coating of powdered sugar will sort of melt around the cookie and create a sticky outer layer. Once the cookies have cooled, give them another generous roll in the powdered sugar. Hope you enjoy these cookies as much as I do.