Russian Tea Cake Recipe for National Cookie Day

December 3 is National Cookie Day, so why not dedicate a blog to everyone’s favorite sweet treat and a fabulous Russian tea cake cookie recipe? The word “cookie” originally comes from the Dutch word “koekje,” meaning cake. Of course, much of the English-speaking world calls them “biscuits,” but that just shows how influential Dutch immigrants were on the development of American English.

Cookies were originally made as a way to test oven temperature. Bakers could use a small bit of dough or batter to make sure the temperature was correct, rather than risk the whole recipe. Remember–oven thermometers are a rather recent invention, only coming into use with the advent of gas and electric ovens in the Nineteenth Century!

Types of Cookies

Cookies, of course, come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from giant chocolate-filled, to airy meringues. But while each part of the world has its own particular cookie traditions, there can be a lot of overlap.

One case in point is a simple butter cookie made with butter, powdered sugar (or sometimes caster or cane sugar), flour, and (sometimes) nuts, then coated in powdered sugar. These have various names: Russian Tea Cakes and Mexican Wedding Cakes are two of them, and their recipes are almost identical. But there are similar cookies throughout the world. Kourabiethes from Greece are a bit more elaborate, using also egg and a leavener, as well as well as citrus zest, but they are extremely similar in texture, taste, and appearance. Ditto for the Qurabiya cookies, the version found throughout the Arab world.

There is a crescent-shaped version called Venillekipferl found in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Switzerland. They are traditionally made a Christmas What distinguishes these is that the powdered sugar with which they are dusted is vanilla-flavored.

Growing up, we called these cookies “snowball cookies” for their white, round appearance, and we made them at Christmas time. We have also heard them called Russian butter cookies, Russian tea ball butter cookies, or Russian tea cookies.