russian tea cakes - kak dela cookies?

Americans are quite ignorant. We think French Fries come from France, Cheddar cheese is a part of the "Mexican Blend" cheese package, and that Russian Tea Cakes have an origin of Russia. Me, being an American of course, fall somewhat into this category (hey, I know fries come from Belgium!). To commemorate my (new) Russian boyfriend, I decided I'd make some Russian Tea Cakes. I called him, across country, as I was still visiting my grandma on vacation, to tell him of the news.


"Uh...I've never heard of Russian Tea Cakes," he says. I tell him it's a Melting Moments Cookie plus some type of chopped nut. "Nope... it's not Russian. Neither is Russian Dressing." Point proven.

Regardless, I was on a mission. I've conquered the disintegrating Melting Moments, now it's my time to conquer these Russian Tea Cakes.

After a little divulgence, I learned that Russian Tea Cakes were, in fact, of Russian origin.

They also became known as "Mexican Wedding Cakes," although that translation is a little blurry...


Whatever may have been lost in translation, what is indeed known is that this cookie became popular around 18th century in Russia and was used in a tea-sharing ceremony.

So basically, suck on that! You may know the history of your culture regarding politics and wars and language, but I still dominate in worldly culinary facts, my dear!

---RECIPE---

Taken from Smitten Kitchen.

ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup pecans, hazelnuts or other nuts, toasted and finely ground (if using hazelnuts, wrap in a dishtowel while still warm and roll about until most of the brown skins come off)
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)

directions:
1. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar and vanilla; beat until well blended. Beat in flour, then nuts. Divide dough in half; form each half into ball. Wrap separately in plastic; chill until cold, about 30 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk remaining 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and cinnamon, if using, in pie dish to blend. Set cinnamon sugar aside.
3. Working with half of chilled dough, roll dough by 2 teaspoonfuls between palms into balls. Arrange balls on heavy large baking sheet, spacing 1/2 inch apart. Bake cookies until golden brown on bottom and just pale golden on top, about 18 minutes. Cool cookies 5 minutes on baking sheet. Gently toss warm cookies in cinnamon sugar to coat completely. Transfer coated cookies to rack and cool completely. Repeat procedure with remaining half of dough. (Cookies can be prepared 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature; reserve remaining cinnamon sugar.)
4. Sift remaining cinnamon sugar over cookies and serve.

amount:

Makes about 4 dozen.

oatmeal raisin cookies - afraid of the oven, my ass

I used to go to California every summer and bask in the famous Orange County sun while playing (and by playing, I mean fighting with) my three younger girl cousins. Those were the days- endless weeks pretending to be frolicking among the wealthy, while really being tormented by these little dweebs because "I was the cooler cousin". Needless to say, things have greatly changed; years have passed, and egos have been burst (mine). Although I haven't spent a summer there for almost two years, I figured I'd fly down on my Spring Break to surprise the fam' of my new life changes!


The last they saw of me, I was the typical angst teenager who'd rather talk on my cell with boys than play dress up with my little cousins. To top it off, for an entire 18 years of my life I have been sheltered from using all hot objects including the oven (thanks, overbearing parents!). So the girl who used to be "afraid of the oven", is now the girl "who loves to bake".


Now, my smart family would obviously never believe such a tall tale without valid evidence. Proof of choice: two types of cookies (some leftover The Chewy / NY Times) and my famous oatmeal raisin cookies. I always feel that one choice of cookie is boring, so I tried to switch it up a bitch with the oats.


Now that I think about it, I probably subconsciously chose the oatmeal raisin cookie through a long lost memory. I can see the memory now- I'm about 10 or 11 or so, just going through my "fat" phase. I'm at my grandparents' (the ones who live in California) house. I wander downstairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night for a "little" snack. I find a pack of Little Debbie's and begin to devour these chewy circular objects. Oatmeal raisin, I see. Well, needless to say, I enjoyed them back in the day; and apparently (or I hoped so) my grandparents did as well.


Typical to true form, I stick with my pals at Cook's Illustrated. They haven't let me down thus far. I prepared the dough, and then later baked them, at my boyfriend's house. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone- bonding time during gift baking.


The cookies came out great- as expected. My family, while in disbelief of the news, soon believed me after eating my cookies. See- people really do change! And also- I really can bake! Hehe.

---RECIPE---

Recipe found here.

white chocolate macadamia nut cookies - credit due to my nut-chopping slave

My amazing boyfriend took my cousin and I out to a fancy-shmancy dinner the previous night. We ordered yummy sushi, fried calamari, new england clam chowder, and basically all the works. To repay him, my cousin sneakily asked him what his favorite type of cookie was (and yes she did this on her own without even asking me). He supposedly responded with "white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies". I found this odd, because in my head I thought he didn't like macadamia nuts in his cookies. Regardless, I took her word for it and we decided to make a little thank-you present for him. Oh and by the way- mac nuts are probably the hardest nut to find (not counting in Hawaii where they're everywhere). It took us three grocery stores to finally find somewhere that sold them (and what a rip-off too).


The dough recipe was fairly basic; nothing too distant from the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe. I did choose to use my favorite non-Cook's-Illustrated recipe website (AllRecipes.com) to find this cookie. They generally have good recipes, and the best part is reading all the ratings and reviews.


Unfortunately there were no photos of us preparing the cookie dough because I didn't predict how fast the sun would set. On the bright side, I had the best time of my life forcing my little cousin to be macadamia-nut-chopping-slave. You see, we realized the nuts (which we toasted, of course) were too large to put in the cookies. So to fix this, someone had to chop these spherical crunchy nuts into little bite site pieces. (And by someone, I really mean my cousin.) I pretended I was busy with other things, forcing her to sit at my dining room table for about 20 minutes chopping a whole bag of rolling nuts on a bouncy pan with a dull knife. My roommate came home and felt so bad for her because first of all, she was sitting in the dark because I forgot to turn the lights on for her, and second of all, she had the most miserable look on her face. It was the funniest shit I ever saw in my life.


She did get repaid though, don't worry. We both got our fair share of eating this delicious cookie dough (finally, another pro-raw-cookie-dough advocate!). We both agreed that this cookie dough topped many other cookie doughs out there (and yes, I've had my fair share of batters to make this judgment).


The cookies came out pretty good surprisingly. I was a little apprehensive not using my faithful Cook's Illustrated or The Chewy recipe, but I'm happy to say that AllRecipes.com was a great runner up.


So what did my boyfriend think of his thank-you present? Once I told him what we made, he said he didn't even like white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Okay- so I don't know where the discrepancies came from (his side or her side) but apparently they are not his favorite and I was indeed correct. Anyways, he still ate them and said they tasted fine. He took them home and they were gone within a few days, so at least somebody out there ate them (and hopefully enjoyed them as well).

---RECIPE---
Taken from All Recipes.

ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts (toasted, and preferably chopped by someone else so you can get a good laugh watching them)
1 cup coarsely chopped white chocolate (white chocolate morsels do just fine)

directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla and almond extracts. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in the macadamia nuts and white chocolate. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

amount:
Makes about 4 dozen. (For some reason we didn't get that many. Perhaps we ate too much dough?)

peanut butter stuffed chocolate cookies - a cookie with an identity crisis

I was excitedly awaiting the arrival of my cousin so much to the point that I could barely contain myself. To alleviate this impatient feeling, I decided to bake something to calm my nerves. Knowing that my dear cousin is an all-inclusive eater, I sought this opportunity to bake something that my boyfriend (a.k.a. Mr. Picky-Eater) would not like. Two ingredients popped into my mind- Peanut butter (his dreadful nemesis) and chocolate (his famously proclaimed disliked ingredient- which is in fact secretly one of his favorites because I know him too well). I recalled a cookie recipe I found in my old Better Homes and Gardens magazine which incorporated both peanut butter and chocolate, so I dug through my bookshelf to find this recipe.


These chocolate cookies were stuffed with a creamy peanut butter center. Even more delicious was the fact that the chocolate outer layer also got a little dollop of peanut butter hidden in (my boyfriend's worst nightmare- a double whammy of peanut butter).


I noticed that there was quite a bit of brown sugar called for in the recipe, so I hoped it would be an almost chocolate-sugar-cookie of some sort.


The egg and finally the chocolate got mixed into the batter. Only after folding in the cocoa powder did the dough finally begin to turn a dark-chocolaty color.


After preparing the batter for the peanut butter center, I rolled out and placed the dough balls for each.


I did have a slight dilemma with the amount of balls in front of me (that's what she said). I seemed to have had a brain fart, and rolled out equal amounts for both filling and outside; when in fact there needed to be double the amount of chocolate balls to peanut butter balls.


No worries, I rolled two peanut butter balls to make one large (and correctly sized) ball, which I then placed into between two awaiting chocolate balls. (There's way too many "balls" in that sentence.)


After closing the edges shut, I heavily rolled them in sugar as I would with typical sugar cookies.


The outer surface of the cookies delicately cracked and looked like little whimsical puffy rocks.


After taking my first bite, I was conflicted as to whether I liked these or not. They weren't as sweet as sugar cookies as I was hoping for, nor were they peanut-butter-y as the recipe implied. In fact, they weren't even as chocolaty as the cookie appeared to be. I'm not even sure what to call these cookies- they lacked a category for which to be differentiated as.


I came to the conclusion that these were so-so cookies. I mean, they weren't anywhere near inedible garbage (like my first sugar cookies were, for example), nor were they deliciously irresistible (like my chocolate chip cookies usually are). After tasting these, my cousin pointed out an interesting relation: My banana cupcakes were too moist, and my chocolate-peanut-butter-cookies were too dry. If only they could lend their characteristics to one another.

---RECIPE---
Taken from Better Homes and Garden magazine, 100 Best Cookies, December 2009
"Peanut Butter Munchies"

ingredients:
1+1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons granulated sugar

directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl stir together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda; set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine butter and the 1/4 cup peanut butter. Beat with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the 1/2 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar. Beat until combined, scraping side of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. Using a wooden spoon, stir in any remaining flour mixture. Shape dough into 32 balls, each about 1+1/4 inches in diameter. Set aside.
3. In a small bowl combine powdered sugar and the 1/2 cup peanut butter. Beat until smooth, kneading by hand if necessary. Shape mixture into 32 balls.
4. For each cookie, flatten a chocolate dough ball; top with a peanut butter ball. (This is where I had my little mistake.). Shape dough around peanut utter ball to enclose. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in the 2 tablespoons granulated sugar.
5. Bake in preheated oven about 8 minutes or just until set and surfaces are slightly cracked. Cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute. Transfer cookies to a wire rack; cool.

amount:
Makes 32 cookies.

super bowl - butter cookies - decoration gone overboard

Once I heard we were for certain having our own little Super Bowl get-together, I ran to the store and bought the pack of Football-themed cookie cutters that I've been eyeing. It's so dorky and it's so pointless (I mean, the Super Bowl comes around once a year), but I knew that this would be my only chance to pull it off. Knowing that I have bad luck with cut-out sugar cookies (they come out nasty) as well as tasty sugar cookies (they don't hold their shape), I had to scrap the idea of sugar cookies all together. Once again Cook's Illustrated saved the day... Butter cookies. They're like a mix of sugar cookies and shortbread, but even better- they retain their shape.


Cook's Illustrated yet again threw me a curve ball in their directions. I wasn't supposed to cream the butter and sugars together (and geez, I thought I knew everything about baking), but instead I was to drop tablespoon sized butter cubes into the dry ingredients until they form together. For about the first 15 tablespoons (there were 16 in total) I was definitely doubting myself because they were just not mixing. After the last tablespoon, and after adding the cream cheese (another weirdo idea), the dough finally crumbled up together.


My snazzy new cookie cutters. After the Super Bowl passes, these will be probably be placed in a ziplock bag and hidden among the rest of my useless crap in the basement, most likely to never be seen again (or maybe until the next Super Bowl.)


I later decided to scrap the football shapes because I already had football shaped brownies and brown sugar cookies... I didn't want to go completely overboard (just somewhat overboard).


This was probably the only time ever that I was dying for the baking to be done with- My hands were yearning instead to decorate these cookies.


I was happily surprised that the recipe did not come with the typical royal icing recipe (which tastes bland, reason being why I won't use it anymore). I guess I would call this recipe a cream cheese icing. It had the texture and hardening capabilities of royal icing, but it had a nice and different flavor to it.


This was my first attempt at "flooding" (baking jargon FYI for outlining the cookie with thicker icing, then filling/flooding it in with liquidier icing. How you like them apples?)


Before I could actually start decorating these cookies, I needed to know some basic information. (1) Who was playing in the Super Bowl (because I obviously don't follow football, therefore I would have no clue), (2) What color these teams were (once again, I would have no idea), and (3) What their symbol-things were. After much googling, I can now say I am very familiar with the colors/symbols of both the New Orleans Saints and the Indianpolis Colts (who are the only two teams I can say such a thing).


Recall how earlier I said that I would only make these cookies if I knew we (as in me, my boyfriend, and our two friends) were having our own exclusive Super Bowl party. The reason being is because if I brought these to a large party of some sort with regular people, those people would probably most definitely think I'm a weirdo.


Seriously though- What sane person would go to such lengths to create and decorate these cookies for football teams?


Before this, I would never have been able to tell you what a football helment looked like. I actually googled "football helmet" to make it as close as possible to the the real thing. Not to mention how each team had their stupid little symbol things on their helments, which actually were a pain in the ass to draw.


And believe it or not- I really did make more than 3 dozen of these stinkin' time-consuming cookies that only took about 5 seconds to eat.


Speaking of which- these cookies actually were pretty darn tasty. Unlike the other cut out cookies I've made before (bland and rock-hard), these were soft and flavorful. The icing also really paired perfectly with the cookies.


So in the end, did my friends think I was a weirdo? Of course they did. Did they think I went way overboard in decorating these cookies? Indeed they did. But you know what- the moral of the story is that I really don't give a shit... And quite honestly, neither did they. Because within a few days, the heaping pile of colorful and glossy cookies were demolished and everyone seemed to have enjoyed doing so. My cookies were a hit, and the entire day spent decorating them was completely worth it.

---RECIPE---
Taken from Cook's Illustrated.

ingredients for cookies:
2+1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup superfine sugar (yes I actually went out and purchased superfine sugar)
1/4 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into sixteen 1/2-inch pieces, at cool room temperature (about 65 degrees)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cream cheese , at room temperature

directions for cookies:
1. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with flat beater (or using a regular hand mixer), mix flour, sugar, and salt on low speed until combined, about 5 seconds. With mixer running on low, add butter 1 piece at a time; continue to mix until mixture looks crumbly and slightly wet, about 1 minute longer. Add vanilla and cream cheese and mix on low until dough just begins to form large clumps, about 30 seconds. (took way more than a few minutes buddy.)
2. Remove bowl from mixer; knead dough by hand in bowl for 2 to 3 turns to form large cohesive mass. Turn out dough onto countertop; divide in half, pat into two 4-inch disks, wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate until they begin to firm up, 20 to 30 minutes. (Can be refrigerated up to 3 days or frozen up to 2 weeks; defrost in refrigerator before using.)
3. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll out 1 dough disk to even 1/8-inch thickness between 2 large sheets parchment paper; slide rolled dough on parchment onto baking sheet and chill until firm, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, repeat with second disk.
4. Working with first portion of rolled dough, cut into desired shapes using cookie cutter(s) and place shapes on parchment-lined baking sheet, spacing them about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until light golden brown, about 10 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking time. Repeat with second portion of rolled dough. (Dough scraps can be patted together, chilled, and re-rolled once.) Cool cookies on wire rack to room temperature.

ingredients for icing:
1 tablespoon cream cheese , at room temperature
3 tablespoons milk
1+1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

directions for icing:
1. Whisk cream cheese and 2 tablespoons milk in medium bowl until combined and no lumps remain.
2. Whisk in confectioners' sugar until smooth, adding remaining milk as needed until glaze is thin enough to spread easily.
3. Drizzle or spread scant teaspoon glaze with back of spoon onto each cooled cookie, as desired. (I colored the icing, then put it in a piping bag for decorating the cookies.)

amount:
Makes thirty-six to forty 2+1/2-inch cookies.