 Russian tea cakes coated in confectioner's sugar | |
| Type | Pastry |
|---|---|
| Course | Dessert |
| Serving temperature | Hot or cold |
| Main ingredients | nuts, butter, powdered sugar |
A Russian tea cake, Mexican wedding cookies or snowball cookies is a kind of pastry, often eaten around Christmas time in the United States. [1]
Russian tea cakes have a relatively simple recipe, generally consisting entirely of flour, water, butter, and ground nuts, the nut variety depending upon the cookie type. After baking, they are rolled in powdered sugar while still hot, then coated again once the cookie has cooled. [2]
European recipes rely upon coarsely chopped hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts. [3] Mexican wedding cookies, also known as "Polvorones", are rich, buttery, nutty cookies with a crumbly texture that melts in your mouth. While they share similar ingredients with Russian tea cakes, they traditionally use coarsely chopped pecans or almonds. A hint of cinnamon is often added, providing a subtle warmth and enhancing their rich, nutty flavor. [4]
A reason for the common name Russian tea cake or any connection to Russian cuisine is unknown. [1] Some have speculated the recipes either derived from other Eastern European shortbread cookies, may have migrated to Mexico with European nuns, or may have been associated with cookies served beside Russian samovars (tea urns). [1] By the 20th century, they were a part of wedding, Christmas and Easter traditions in the U.S., known by their popular Russian tea cake or Mexican wedding cookie name.
Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
Marzipan is a confection consisting primarily of sugar and almond meal, sometimes augmented with almond oil or extract.
Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Shortbread does not contain any leavening, such as baking powder or baking soda. Shortbread is widely associated with Christmas and Hogmanay festivities in Scotland, and some Scottish brands are exported around the world.
Fruitcake or fruit cake is a cake made with candied or dried fruit, nuts, and spices, and optionally soaked in spirits. In the United Kingdom, certain rich versions may be iced and decorated.
Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location on the fertile Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea, giving rise to fishing, farming, and overseas trade. Due to the availability of water and flat grassland, the Dutch diet contains many dairy products such as butter and cheese. The court of the Burgundian Netherlands enriched the cuisine of the elite in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th century, so did in the 17th and 18th century colonial trade, when the Dutch ruled the spice trade, played a pivotal role in the global spread of coffee, and started the modern era of chocolate, by developing the Dutch process chocolate.
Christmas cookies or Christmas biscuits are traditionally sugar cookies or biscuits cut into various shapes related to Christmas.
Chocolate salami is an Italian and Portuguese dessert made from cocoa, broken biscuits, butter and sometimes alcohol such as port wine or rum. The dessert became popular across Europe and elsewhere, often losing alcohol as an ingredient along the way.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the British poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognised today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by British food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge. Cakes are available in many flavours and have many recipes as well. Sponge cakes have become snack cakes via the Twinkie.
Mazurek is a very sweet, flat cake baked in Poland for Easter.
Qurabiya also ghraybe, ghorayeba, ghoriba, ghribia, ghraïba, gurabija, ghriyyaba,, kurabiye, or kourabiedes and numerous other spellings and pronunciations, is a shortbread-type biscuit, usually made with ground almonds. Versions are found in most Arab, Balkan and Ottoman cuisines, with various different forms and recipes. They are similar to polvorones from Andalusia.
A sandwich cookie, also known as a sandwich biscuit, is a type of cookie made from two cookies with a filling between them. Typically the hard, thin cookies known as biscuits outside North America are used, though some sandwich cookies use softer or thicker cookies. Many types of fillings are used, such as cream, ganache, buttercream, chocolate, cream cheese, jam, peanut butter, lemon curd, or ice cream.
The sandie, sometimes referred to as sablé, is a type of sugar cookie or shortbread cookie. The pecan sandie is a common variety of the cookie utilizing pecans. The Keebler Company has registered the brand name Sandies, which it uses for a line of shortbread cookies.
Jødekager, also known as Joedekager, is a popular cookie of Danish Jewish origin. The cookie originated in the Danish Jewish community in Denmark starting in the 1700s, though the current version dates back to 1856. Its name likely originates from bearing a similar appearance to cakes sold in Jewish bakeries. It remains popular to this day, notably during Christmas.
