Ever made Mexican Wedding Cookies? Or Russian Tea Cakes. They’re one in the same. If you’re interested in the history of this powdered-sugar-puff cookie, read below.

My friends Jackie and Cherrie were at my house a good part of the day recently. Baking cookies. We’ve been doing this for several Decembers – we each bring some stuff, and I often make the batter for one or two cookies before the big day. This year we made cardamom cookies, chocolate almond saltine bars, cranberry noels, and these, the Mexican Tea Cookies (or Cakes), a new recipe for our Christmas repertoire. Cherrie arrived with a printout in hand –from this recipe at TLC (Discovery Channel). These are SUCH a simple cookie to make. Here’s a bit of history about the cookie (from ehow.com):

The term “Mexican wedding cookie/cake” did not appear in the American vocabulary until the early 1950s, after which the term appeared in virtually every basic baking cookbook. At the same time, recipes for “Russian teacakes” began disappearing from the same books. Russian teacakes and Mexican wedding cookies are virtually the same thing in ingredients, method and final product. Many historians speculate that the term Mexican wedding cookie/cake was used to replace the term Russian teacake due to the strained U.S. relationship with Russia at the time (the Cold War).

Aside from Mexican wedding cookies, biscochitos and Russian teacake, the crunchy buttery ball also goes by the name polvorones in Spain, butterballs, Swedish teacakes, moldy mice, pecan sandies, Danish almond cookies, Finnish butter strips, Napoleon hats and melting moments. The same cookies (same ingredients and method but with different shapes) go by different names [in] various regions around the world, and it is impossible to state who was the first to pioneer the recipe.

In that write-up above, I particularly like that these cookies are called “moldy mice.” I read online at one website that many believe it was Russian nuns who went to Mexico and began making the cookies every Christmas season or for a special occasion like a wedding. Hence they were transformed into Mexican Wedding Cakes.

What they are, are easy to make. You mix up butter, powdered sugar, finely minced pecans and some flour, and that’s about it. The dough is chilled a bit to make it easier to roll into balls. With 2 of us working at it, that didn’t take all that long. The cookies are baked for 20 minutes, then rolled over and over and over and ever-so gently in powdered sugar.

In the photo above are the cookies right out of the oven. The pecans gives the cookies a little color plus the butter too. Some recipes call for shortening, but we wanted to use a butter one since we think they taste better.

After baking, the hot little cookies are put into a bowl of powdered sugar and delicately – and I do mean gently –  rolled around in the sugar, lightly pressing the sugar into the cookies. They must be allowed to cool in the sugar, periodically rolling them. That’s why Jackie and Cherrie have sugar-coated hands in the photo at top.

After cooling completely they were gently laid onto sheets of foil. I put mine (since I was at home) in a sealing Tupperware container. They’ll keep that way for a couple of weeks, I think.

What’s GOOD: there’s nothing quite like the extra light and crumbly texture of Mexican Wedding Cookies, and I always try to eat them over a sink or a large napkin, as it’s so very hard to eat these without getting powdered sugar all over everything you’re wearing. These cookies are no different. Hence it’s a good idea to make SMALL cookies – that way the entire cookie can go into your mouth without biting it in half. Easy to make – the only tedious part is the gently rolling in the powdered sugar. That takes some patience.
What’s NOT: nothing at all – these are delicious. The only intrinsic problem is the fragile nature of these cookies – it’s hard not to crumble them in the sugar-rolling process. I broke 2 cookies while I was helping with the first batch of these (we made 2). Only solution was to eat them 🙂  !

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It’s fun being a teacher in the kitchen. All of our 3 children know how to cook, and during their growing-up years they helped in the kitchen. For a year or so during the teens, each kid had to cook a meal for everyone once a week. Skip forward 25 years, and now our various grandchildren are visiting from time and time. I’ve spent patient hours in the kitchen with each of them, helping them to master a recipe or two. Mostly it’s seemed to be cookies, because that’s what they wanted to make. Fine with me. This time, it was our oldest grandson’s [girl] friend Mary’s turn. She’s never cooked, so with coaching from me, she made dinner!

Logan had asked for salmon. I chose a recipe I’ve been wanting to make anyway, and with a couple of exceptions, I had all the ingredients. I had lemons, not limes, and I didn’t have any fresh dill. But this recipe was delicious enough as is – but yes, next time I try it I’ll buy limes and dill.

There’s Mary listening to me explain about something. I talked to her about Sichuan pepper, what a “pinch” was, and how to drizzle. Also how to use a mortar and pestle, grate fresh ginger, chop and sauté mushrooms in butter, make rice (she’d done that before). She was a very good student – I demonstrated some of the things and she quickly tried it and did it all very well.

We used a rice cooker, did the mushrooms separately, and combined them at the end. The salmon was prepped with some fresh ginger spread on each piece, salt, the Sichuan pepper, red peppercorns, a bit of oil, then they were baked in foil packets – about 10+ minutes. Mary made a green salad – I already had some of my Molasses Honey Vinaigrette in the refrigerator, so Mary just had to chop up the salad.

It was a lovely dinner. Mary did a superb job of getting everything done and the dinner came together well. And the salmon? It was really, really good. I think we all liked the crunch of the red peppercorns, and the amount of heat from the Sichuan pepper was just right.  The little crunch from fleur de sel on top was an added, nice crunch. As I mentioned, with Mary’s help, we made a rice cooker batch of basmati rice with mushrooms that was fabulous. I’ve included it in the recipe below. It was so good I made the rice again some days later for an Indian chicken dinner, which I’ll write up in a few days.

What’s GOOD: the salmon was cooked perfectly (almost under-done, but it was cooked through) and we all liked the seasonings a lot. The foil packet made it so simple with an easy clean-up. I’d definitely make this again, and it’s nice enough to make for guests too. The little drizzle of cream on the salmon at the end (just before serving) gave it a little lusciousness, although almost once poured you couldn’t see it – it was only a teaspoon per serving. I’d definitely make this again. I don’t guarantee the flavors if you use anything but the red peppercorns. Black ones would be oh-too strong, for sure.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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What intrigued me about this recipe was its use of some of the standard Thanksgiving foods (turkey, cranberries, parsnips, carrots) so I decided to adapt it some and have it be something you could use with leftovers.

What I had was about 1 1/2 cups of left over turkey breast from the Dry-Brined Turkey Breast I roasted the other day. I could have made turkey sandwiches, but I thought it would be enough to use in a soup of some kind. In searching for something else, I ran across the recipe in a soup cookbook and just adapted it to suit me.

I did have to buy fresh parsnips and fresh organic carrots too. The recipe includes potatoes – but I chose not to use them. But afterwards, I wondered if I really should have included them because the parsnip and carrot soup was really quite sweet. Maybe too sweet. So I’ve included the potatoes in the recipe below. The original recipe supposes you’re starting from scratch with the turkey, so it included stewing a turkey leg with all kinds of aromatics. I skipped all that and just made the soup. First you start with the parsnips and carrots, plus the shallot – sautéing them in oil and butter. (If I’d added potatoes they would have been in the mix as well). Both carrots and parsnips are more complex carbs than potatoes; hence I used them and not the potatoes.

Then you add chicken broth, a sprig of rosemary (I used a big one) and thyme (another big one) and some fresh cranberries. Although I had fresh cranberries, I decided to use some of the cooked cranberries (in compote) that I served with the turkey – I added a couple of tablespoons. Once it was cooked through it was pureed in the blender.

Adding some cream and milk to the soup smoothed it out. You’re left with a lovely, fragrant and tasty cream soup and then you add in the additional fresh cranberries and the cooked, cubed turkey. They give the soup some texture. A little garnish of Italian parsley and it’s ready to serve. You could easily adapt this recipe using left over parsnips and carrots, if you happen to have them from your holiday dinner.

What’s GOOD: Comfort food for sure. A nice way to use up some turkey (or chicken). Very different with the fresh cranberries added in – they’re a bit tart  – but a counterbalance to the sweetness of the carrots and parsnips.
What’s NOT: nothing really. It’s a good soup. We both liked it a lot.

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It’s only in the month of December that I allow myself to indulge in Bishop’s Bread. Not that it’s all that “bad,” but someone did ask me the other day if I wasn’t bothered by ingesting all of that red dye from the maraschino cherries. I decided years ago that since I do only make this once a year, and I don’t eat THAT much of it, that I can allow myself a slice every day or two or three. My friend Cherrie, who also loves this bread, asked me if I would bring some of the slices to a girl’s event at her house last week . . . she put it out on a platter with other things. She and I both took a half of a slice with a hot cup of coffee. We were seated across the room from each other and happened to make eye contact as we both bit into it at the same time – we both grinned – like “thumbs up.” The chocolate chips, the walnuts, and then, those halved maraschino cherries too. There’s just enough batter (the cake part) to hold it together. So delicious!

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You might think you don’t need a recipe for a fruit salad, right? But if you’d like to serve a fruit salad that’s just a bit different, you could try this one. You just have to plan ahead a few hours or overnight (to make the flavorful syrup) to serve this with a brunch. It’s well worth making.

Ginger seems to be on my radar lately. And if I were to just add a vanilla bean to the stem ginger in syrup that I made last week, I’d have had half of this recipe already done! In this case you make a simple syrup with fresh ginger, a vanilla bean and a bunch of lemon peel. That does need to be made ahead as it provides a ton of flavor to the fruit once you mix it all together.

Once that mixture has cooled and the solid stuff (ginger, vanilla bean and lemon peels) strained out, you’re left with this delicious ginger/vanilla essence syrup. You could just slurp it with a spoon. Trust me on that one! (If you have leftovers of the syrup, it would be lovely added to a cup of hot tea.) But we’re making a fruit salad, so all you do is add in all the fruit. You could change what YOU like to have in the way of fruit – at the class Phillis Carey used Navel oranges, mangoes, bananas, kiwis, grapes and pomegranate seeds. It was a beautiful and very tasty combination. You could add apples, pears or pineapple too. Your choice.

What’s GOOD: the flavoring in the syrup is what makes this. The ginger gives the syrup just a teeny tiny bit of heat and the vanilla adds a depth to it – perhaps not distinguishable, but it makes for one very tasty bowl of fruit. The pomegranate seeds add a lovely color to the presentation too.

What’s NOT: really nothing except that you do have to plan ahead one day or at least half a day to make this.

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Well, I can truly say the Christmas cookie baking has begun. I’ve started with a list of the cookies I want to make this year (there are some regulars, of course), but I always like to try something new too. I hunted through my cookbooks and eventually settled on this cookie found online.

And what a winner this one is! It’s from King Arthur Flour. I’ve mentioned it here before that they have a great blog, called Baking Banter. They have a big test kitchen, and numerous bakers who enjoy writing up their interesting baking journeys. These cookies are just one.

When you think of gingerbread cookies you might just think of the flat, hard variety you’d find for decorating gingerbread men. Or making gingerbread houses. These cookies are nothing like those. This is a thicker cookie – just full of spicy aromas – and also some chocolate (both cocoa and some mini-chocolate chips). They’re soft and tender cookies, although by tender I don’t mean like shortbread, either. No, these are soft. Not exactly cake-like, though. Not brownie-like. More like pumpkin cookies – moist but bursting with the spices that flavor this cookie (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves). You also notice the molasses (there’s a LOT of molasses in these). That’s what gives the dark-dark color, not the cocoa. Once the cookies are all mixed up, you add in the mini chocolate chips, then they’re rolled into balls (or scooped with a cookie scoop in 1-tablespoon sizes) and dipped into the pearl sugar, placed on parchment-lined baking sheets and baked 10-12 minutes.

Now, I have to mention . . . I was baking these cookies to take to a cookie exchange, so I decorated them according to the recipe. It calls for (Swedish) pearl sugar. I found it at my local grocery store. I’m not a fan of those kinds of toppings particularly – they distract me from the cookie flavor (when you crunch down on them). To me those crunchy sugar things are just a waste of calories – they don’t have any taste to speak of – they’re just sugar-sugar-sugar. The cookie has all you’ll need. But, they look cute with the topping.

The dough is very easy to mix up. You scoop a small tablespoon of dough into a round shape and dip just half of the cookie into the pearl sugar. If I did them with the topping again I would use fewer of the pearl sugar thingies – the ones that got close to the hot pan melted and don’t look very attractive. The others buried slightly into each cookie top looked fine.

There, above, you can see them rolled into balls (those are the raw cookies) and dipped, ready for baking. The cookies, once baked, need to cool a bit on the baking sheets, so I just went ahead and formed all the remaining dough into cookie shapes so it was easy to put in the next batch. Don’t put the cookies that close together on the baking sheet or they’d all melt into one another – this was just my “staging sheet.”

If you bake these without the pearl sugar, you might put clear sugar crystals on top – that would be better than the pearl shape, I think. But the cookies truly don’t need any embellishment. They are very dark colored – most people would mistake these for chocolate cookies, so I’d be sure to put a little sign out saying what they are. I’m going to make a sign when I go to the cookie exchange. In this group, each person brings 6 little bags of 6 cookies each, and you pick and choose to take home 6 bags from other people. Supposedly only one bag per person, so you can’t choose to take all 6 bags of spritz or divinity from someone else. So that’s why it would be good to have a sign on these since the look would lead most people to think they’re all chocolate.

What’s GOOD: loved the flavor of these. Very, very spicy indeed (not hot spicy, just warm pumpkin pie kind of spices). Or gingerbread – which of course, these ARE. They have a little tiny bit of the cake-like quality of gingerbread, but they’re definitely a cookie. Next time I won’t bother with the white pearl sugar, but that’s just me. Your kids will likely love dipping the balls into the topping. Just don’t let them overdo it.

What’s NOT: the only thing I’d do differently next time is do without the pearl sugar. Not because it made the cookies wrong or anything. I just don’t care for the crunch. Although, once baked the pearl sugar isn’t so crunchy.

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In 1987 this recipe (called Tahoe Brunch back then) was published in our neighborhood weekly newspaper. I clipped it out and prepared it numerous times over the years – often when we did a brunch on our sailboat because it can be prepared the day before, then baked the day-of. (We have a smallish oven on the boat, and I did have one pan that would fit in it.) A month or so ago I went to a Phillis Carey cooking class, and she prepared it too, with just a couple of modifications. It was then I realized that I’ve never posted this recipe here on my blog. That mistake is now fixed!

It seems that I don’t entertain for brunch anymore. I think it’s because every Sunday morning we’re busy attending morning services at our Presbyterian church, and to try to put on a brunch after that, when we don’t even get home from church until about 11 is just not feasible. Do people have Sunday brunches on Saturdays? I suppose I could – I just haven’t ever thought of it.

So this delicious recipe has been updated just a little bit – I reduced the amount of Italian sausage, tried to quantify the amount of bread called for, have given options for the cheddar or Provolone, and options for either parsley or basil. And gave you options for adding the mushrooms (I used to) or fresh tomatoes (Phillis’ recipe). I’m a bit staggered by the calorie count on this recipe – I may have never noticed it before.

What’s great about it is the fact that it’s made the day before, and over the years I’ve made this numerous times for Thanksgiving morning, Christmas morning, or New Years Day morning. It’s the Italian sausage in it that I like so much. Spicy sausage just gives this a wonderful flavor. Mix that with the cheese, and it’s kind of like pizza in a breakfast dish, I suppose.

It’s very easy to put together once you cook the Italian sausage and onions. Phillis’ recipe had you cube up the bread. My old recipe calls for buttering bread in slices. Either way works.

What’s GOOD: It’s the Italian sausage in it that I like the best, but then I’m a fan of the stuff. The recipe just has lots of flavors abounding in it from the mushrooms, cheese, tomatoes and the seasonings. Love that it can be made 24 hours before. Do bake in a glass or ceramic dish, not metal. You’ll hear lots of mmmm’s and sighs when you serve this.
What’s NOT: nothing really except that it’s rich and high in calories! But it’s a special occasion kind of dish.

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Most evenings I don’t serve any carb with our meal. We just don’t need it. Not that we wouldn’t LIKE to have some, but we know it’s better for us if we don’t indulge in potatoes or rice or some other kind of starch. Even bread. So, this revision was borne of that wish – could we have my old favorite, cabbage patch stew that is usually served with a lovely fluffy mound of whipped potatoes on top?

If you click on the link above, you’ll go to my 2007 blog post about this – one of my all-time favorite family meals. It’s a soupy, stewy kind of dish that I originally got out of a little Betty Crocker cookbook that was given to me when I got married the 1st time in 1962. Looong time ago. It’s SO very easy to make – all in one pan except for the potatoes.

Back some years ago I made a Kalyn’s Kitchen recipe for a kind of cheesy cauliflower dish called Twice Baked Cauliflower that gives you the illusion you’re eating baked (mashed) potatoes with all the trimming like sour cream, bacon, chives, etc. Every time I make those, I think about our friend Lynn (and his wife Sue) who now live in Colorado. Lynn, you see, abhors cauliflower. I served those to him one night – didn’t even mention what it was – he ate it, loved it, and somewhere in the conversation I mentioned cauliflower. Lynn turned a bit blue. CAULIFLOWER? No. That couldn’t have been cauliflower. He simply doesn’t EAT cauliflower. But he did. Now whether he’s ever eaten it since, I don’t know. (Sue, you’ll have to tell me . . . she reads my blog.)

SO, all that said, I decided to lighten up my old favorite by making it with half ground turkey and half ground beef, and then to make the “mashed potatoes” with cauliflower. The only carbs in this dish come from the one can of kidney beans that are also part of the recipe (and whatever little amount of carbs exist in the other vegetables). The beans – I left those in – they’re more complex carbs. As for the cauliflower – just TRUST ME about this – you’ll hardly know you’re eating cauliflower. I’ve re-written the recipe completely below, including the cauliflower mixture. If you eat the cauliflower “mashed potatoes” straight, yes, you’ll probably notice they don’t quite taste like potatoes, but when it’s mixed with the herby, spicy stew mixture, you simply don’t know. It has almost the same texture as mashed potatoes.

What’s GOOD: This is a very healthy meal – especially if you use all turkey or use less. Or no turkey, of course. The combination of veggies just works. What can I say. And the mashed potatoes cauliflower put it into the comfort food category. Make a double batch and freeze the left overs (freeze the cauliflower separately – come to think of it – I’ve never frozen pureed cauliflower so don’t know absolutely how that would be once defrosted – let me know) – that’s what I do.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing. I love this stuff.

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You know how adding buttermilk in any baked good makes it super tender? This recipe does it in spades, as they say, to make the softest, most tender scone I may have ever tasted. And then you add in the gingerbread flavors. Delicious is all I can say.

Understand . . . this is not gingerbread. It’s nothing whatsoever like cake gingerbread. It’s the gingerbread (spice) flavors that give it the delish flavor but in a soft, tender flaky scone.

My favorite scone that I’ve been making for decades, Buttermilk Scones, is similar, but the proportions in the ingredients are different than these. How, exactly, the chemistry works in baking continues to baffle me. Sometimes I go to Harold McGee’s book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Usually I find the answer there to most of my cooking questions about why and how. And I sometimes refer to that baking chemistry book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman, with all of the proportions students learn in culinary school. I don’t remember them, period. When I have a question, though, I often dig out that book too, to see if it has any answers. Scones aren’t covered in that book, however. Only biscuits, and these just aren’t “biscuits.”

Nevertheless, buttermilk is a tenderizer in bread and pastries. Of and by itself I don’t think it has much super-tenderizing powers, but combined with flour and fat, it must develop the tenderness. I’ve never found that using the dried buttermilk powder works as well. I’ve never tried a side by side trial, but something happens, not good I mean, when they dry buttermilk.

Technically, what we buy at our grocery stores ISN’T buttermilk. It’s a cultured buttermilk. Real buttermilk is a by-product of real cream when the butterfat liquids run off in the process of making butter. I haven’t a clue how to find real honest-to-goodness buttermilk. I believe I’ve looked at Whole Foods, thinking surely they’d have it, but they didn’t when I visited the store some months ago. If you’re a farmer or near dairy farmers, perhaps you can buy it directly. I’d love to try it in baking. I remember trying buttermilk when I was a child, on my grandfather’s farm. He didn’t have dairy cattle, but his brother did, on adjoining land. I didn’t love drinking it, as my grandfather did, but it was definitely more tasty. More tangy for sure, but that’s about all I recall.

But, for purposes of providing tenderness to baked goods, store-bought buttermilk suffices. Our normal buttermilk starts with skim milk, actually, then they culture it somehow and it ends up being a low-fat product and has the consistency of real buttermilk. The little tiny globules in store-bought buttermilk is produced – it’s not natural to the product. It is what it is, and we’re mostly stuck with it. If you want to know whether your buttermilk is or isn’t real, look for the word cultured. That’s the manufactured (fake) stuff. If it says pure buttermilk, give it a try. Taste it too.

Now, back to these scones. They’re mixed together much like any other scone mixture, so I won’t belabor that process. The batter does contain eggs – that’s not always in scones – they tenderize baked things also. The only thing Phillis Carey said about this recipe is that it’s imperative you not add any more flour than necessary – more flour = dry and less tender. You’ll develop a rhythm once you make these yourselves. Just know the batter is very wet and you want to keep it that way as much as possible. Your hands will get kind of raggedy from the sticky dough, but that’s okay!

You don’t have to make the marmalade butter, but it’s so easy to do, and would add an especially nice touch if you’re making these for guests, particularly. Just mix butter, marmalade and a pinch of salt if you use unsalted butter. Let it sit for awhile so the flavors meld a bit. Otherwise, serve with butter and whatever jam you have on hand.

What’s GOOD: if you’re a lover of fall, gingerbread or pumpkin pie spices, you’ll love these scones. They’re super tender from the buttermilk and from very little handling. You’ll really enjoy these. I just about guarantee it. If you have left overs, wrap them in foil and freeze for another day.
What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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What’s the nomenclature – this is an adult beverage dessert? Made with Amaretto in the pudding part and more in the whipped cream topping. There’s not THAT much liqueur in this – 1/3 cup total, spread over 8-10 servings, so that’s about 1 1/2 teaspoons or so per person. Maybe too much for young children since this dessert isn’t cooked, so it’s the straight stuff . . . keep that in mind.

When the first bite of this hit my tongue, well, I sighed in contentment. At the cooking class with Phillis Carey where I learned how to make this, the classroom was in total silence as we all mmmm’d or sighed. Phillis has devised lots of tiramisu variations. She just loves the dessert in general, so she keeps coming up with new methods of making it. The orange one she made a few months ago was off the charts. And now this one with pumpkin. Wow.

Start making this several hours ahead because it needs to rest – so the liqueur soaks into the ladyfingers. It’s still the raw liqueur used, but once it sits with the pastry it seems to mellow some. First you must make a simple syrup (1 cup sugar + 1 cup water, the standard measurements). You do have to buy (well, find first, then buy) the soft ladyfingers. This time of year (as I write this, it’s Fall) they’re harder to find – if you find them (usually near the fresh fruit, such as strawberries, in the produce section) buy extra and stick those in the freezer so you have them when you need them. Since I had this I’ve looked in 2 stores and haven’t found them. I’ll keep looking.

USING DRIED ITALIAN LADYFINGERS: Phillis said you could make this with the hard Italian ladyfingers – in that case I recommend you add 1 1/2 cups of water to the simple syrup and Amaretto mixture – you’ll need a whole lot more liquid to make this work. The proportion for that came from my favorite tiramisu recipe where Cook’s Illustrated devised the amount of coffee needed to dip the dried ladyfingers (you need a total of 2 1/2 cups liquid to soak dried ladyfingers).  If you want to make your own soft ladyfingers, I found a recipe at the Food Network.

Layer the soft ladyfingers in a 9×13 pan and brush them with the Amaretto syrup. You’ll make a big bowl full of the pumpkin mixture – it’s sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar and Mascarpone cheese, and a whole bunch of heavy cream whipped up. Then you add in the pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices. Half of it is layered on top of the bottom layer of ladyfingers, then another layer of ladyfingers, the balance of the Amaretto syrup is brushed on, then finally you add the last of the pumpkin cream mixture. That’s covered and refrigerated for at least 4 hours, or up to 24 hours. Then just before serving, whip yet more whipped cream with the Amaretto syrup and that gets spread on the top along with the crushed up Amaretti cookies. You’ll feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven, especially if you love pumpkin.

What’s GOOD: The pumpkin, the cream, the Amaretto. Oh gosh. Everything. The fact that you can make this 24 hours ahead is also very nice.

What’s NOT: should I mention it’s decadent? Certainly over the top with heavy cream, but we’re not counting, right ;- )

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