Butterballs, Russian Tea Cake

Yesterday I set out to make Mexican Wedding Cakes, I new darn well that they in fact were not Mexican or wedding cakes so why on earth did we call them that?  My research on this didn’t bring me any really good answers or even a <blockquote> to enhance the smartness of this page.  All I found is that they were call Russian Tea Cakes until about the 1950s when the Mexican Wedding Cake term started being used.  The guess is that it was because of our strained relationship with Russia at the time.  Hmmm, can anyone say “Freedom Fries”. 

Tea Cakes are a from of a Jumble, which is a cookie like pastry that dates back to the middle ages. Somewhere along the way someone decided butter > water, bet that is when they started calling them butterballs.  🙂 

Ingredients

1 cup of finely chopped nuts (almonds, pecans or walnuts will do)
1/2 cup of powdered sugar
8 oz (1 cup) of softened butter
2 teaspoon of vanilla
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 cups of all purpose flour
Powdered sugar to roll the cookies in

My first task was to chop the nuts, and since I am incredibly efficient today (read that as LAZY) I added 1 cup of frozen walnuts to my Kitchen Aid Mini chopper. Historically my family has used pecans for these cookies but since I have left over walnuts from making pesto it made more sense to use them.  I couldn’t tell the difference in the taste so I guess that means it is okay. Start by creaming together the butter, powdered sugar and vanilla. Slowly add the flour and salt to form a dough.  Now the fun part, making even sized balls of dough.  I used my cookie scoop but the cookies are large enough that you need to take 2 bites giving you a great opportunity to get powdered sugar all down the front of you.  😉 Note to self get a smaller scoop for next time.  These won’t spread so there is no need to give them too much room on the baking sheet. 

Bake for 15-20 min at 325 degrees you want them golden but not brown.  I switch from the bottom rack to the top rack midway through the baking time.  Once out of the oven roll them in powdered sugar and let sit to cool. 

 After they have cooled completely roll in powdered sugar again.  YUM!! They are ready to eat.