Russian Tea Cakes AKA “Snowballs”
Russian
Dessert, Gluten-Free
These delicious cookies go by many names: Russian Tea Cakes, Mexican Wedding Cookies and Snowballs-I'm sure there are others. My very old recipe card is circa 1972, and I have always called these yummies, RUSSIAN TEA CAKES (never did I dream I would actually live in Russia one day, which we did). As with so many of my recipes, I needed to reinvent these cookies as gluten free! I love high quality gluten free flour, but still find it necessary to add just a wee bit of xanthan gum! It’s a little pricey, but makes a difference in gluten free baking!
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- ½ cup powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tsp. vanilla
2 ¼ cups high quality gluten free flour, sifted
- 1/4 tsp. xanthan gum
- ¼ tsp. salt
- ¾ cup toasted pecans, finely chopped
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Line cookie sheet with parchment paper
- Use a food processor to chop and grind 3/4 cup of pecans.
- Cream butter & sugar, add vanilla & blend with mixer, scraping sides as you go.
- Combine flour & salt.
- Work in flour & salt gradually.
- Add flour & salt mixture gradually as you blend.
- Stop mixer to scrape dough from sides as you go.
- Add nuts slowly
- I finish mixing with my hands
- Shape dough into 1 inch balls & place on cookie sheet.
- Bake at 400 for 7-8 minutes. Be careful to not burn the bottoms. Some people prefer 375 at 9-10 minutes.
Roll in powdered sugar. To avoid cookie crumble, let the hot cookies cool for 1- 2 minutes. They’ll be less likely to crumble when rolling in the powdered sugar. Roll once and then twice! They’re going to be gorgeous snowballs!