
Russian Tea Cakes
Cookies where you can taste every ingredient and are not too sweet!
Ingredients
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 tsp of vanilla
- ½ cup sifted confectioners sugar
- 2 ¼ cup sifted flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¾ cup finely chopped almonds (we crush sliced almonds)
- More confectioners sugar for rolling
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400°
2. Mix together softened butter, confectioners sugar and vanilla until creamy.
3. Sift the flour and salt together and stir into wet ingredients until mixture moistens into crumbles.
4. Add almonds and mix in thoroughly.
5. Chill dough.
6. Roll into 1 inch balls and place 2 ½ inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.
7. Bake until set, not brown (10-12 minutes) (brown on the bottom)
8. While still warm, roll in confectioners sugar. Cool.
9. Once cool, roll in confectioners sugar again.
Notes
Tip: The better the butter, the better the cookie, but isn’t that always the way it goes? You do not want a wet dough or a crumb dough. You can add a tablespoon of room temperature butter to the dough until it *just* forms.
One of the top 3 cookies in our house growing up, it’s just not Christmas without these Russian Tea Cakes! My brother had to have his Chocolate Chip Cookies, my sister has always loved her Angel Flake Sugar Cookies and the trinity is rounded out with these incredible cookies of heaven for me.
I love food where you can taste every ingredient and cookies that are not too sweet.

These Russian Tea Cakes are crumbly and dense at the same time. I’ve seen these made with pecans, but we’ve always made them with almonds. It lends a more delicate flavor.
My mom gets the credit for this recipe. She got this recipe in Home Economics in High School and it was the only thing she could cook when she got married! Thank goodness our dad could cook 🙂
You begin typically by creaming your wet ingredients and mixing in your dry ingredients. The magic happens with when you are mixing and you think there’s no way it will mix moist enough. Keep going until the batter just combines.
Enjoy!
Have you had these before? Do you have any tweaks that have become your way of making them? Comment below!
Looking for something more substantial? Try our Grandma Ila’s Mac and Cheese!
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