The Holidays

I do have to admit that I love the hol­i­days. The Presents, the cook­ies, the presents, the dec­o­ra­tions, the presents, the hol­i­day shows, the presents, Christ­mas music…hmm..what else…oh yeah, THE PRESENTS!

I love get­ting and giv­ing gifts.

But I will admit, my most favorite thing about the holidays…the excite­ment my wife has for Christ­mas and how she gets the whole fam­i­ly excited!

She loves dec­o­rat­ing, she loves the music, the tree, the cook­ies and the snow.

But I am get­ting a bit off track…

Today I am bak­ing cook­ies. Russ­ian Tea Cakes to be exact. That is one mem­o­ry that I will have for­ev­er, the dis­play of hol­i­day cook­ies that my Great-Aunt would make every Christmas.

She would make sand­bukkles, Russ­ian tea cakes, bird’s nests, bakla­va, fudge, divin­i­ty, rum balls, and many oth­er assortments.

She would every­thing in tins, and put togeth­er an assort­ment of treats on a 3‑tiered plat­ter, that she would store out on her back porch (it was a 3‑season, so it was always cold in the winter..perfect for stor­ing items.). After Christ­mas eve din­ner it was my job to go and get that plat­ter so we could have treats.

Years lat­er I am try­ing to fig­ure out what some of those cook­ies were so I could make them. They had dif­fer­ent names for them, than what they should be. But I have found a few of her recipes and the Russ­ian Tea Cakes is one of them.

I love the way they taste and they are so easy to make (sort of, they can crum­ble when your rolling them in con­fec­tion­er’s sug­ar if your not care­ful). But they are good!

So, 4 batch­es today, and each batch makes 4.5 dozen cook­ies. So I will have plen­ty for this year!

Well, I just took out my first test batch…they flattened…hmmm…they are sup­pose to stay as a ball. Per­haps my dough isn’t chilled enough…back into the freezer.…my dough did seem creamier.…perhaps I soft­ened the but­ter too much.…

Okay…maybe this recipe is hard­er than it sounds…they turned out per­fect last year…