Russian Tea Cakes

I baked them today–making the dough before work so that, during my shift, it could chill the required six hours in the fridge. They came out slightly flat, but it’s my fault for not cooking a test-cookie first to see how well it held its shape. More flour next time.

Here is the link to my Cooking tea gallery (I decided to make a separate gallery for it, as I do like to bake), although I will link some thumbnails below the cut.

Russian Tea Cakes

The recipe was taken from allrecipes.com, and I am satisfied enough with it that it will go into my recipe book. I’m also going to write it down in my tea notebook, to accompany the little notes I scribbled down in there regarding how well the recipe went.

They’re very tasty. Like rather crumbly, but still melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies. You roll them in icing sugar soon after you take them out of the oven, so the sugar sticks and melts to it, and then roll them again once they’ve cooled to ensure a good, white coating.

I wanted to try baking them for mother’s day–tomorrow–and hopefully they’ll be accompanied by finger-sandwiches and tea. Something uselessly British like cucumber sandwiches. Maybe a more American variation of the recipe, though. Since the traditional recipe is, literally, sliced cucumbers on buttered white bread. Americans like to spice things up with spice sand cream cheese to replace the butter.

I got my mom hooked on Assam black tea, so for sure I’ll have a pot of that out as well.

I was also going to try some tea-flavoured petit four recipes, but most involved teabags or ground tea, which I had neither of on-hand. Next time.

My usual fall-back recipes for tea have been scones/”tea biscuits” (round, flaky biscuits you cut open and spread with jam and cream), and biscotti. One Christmas, my Secret Santa gift to a co-worker was two boxes full of assorted (four: walnut, cranberry and white chocolate, dark chocolate, and orange) home-made biscotti. I spent hours baking it.

Biscotti

My obsessive tendencies had me count out exactly six of each variety to pack away. I have a picture of what was left over, from left to right being orange, chocolate, cranberry, and walnut.

I suppose baking this much does, unfortunately, knock off a few masculinity points, but in my defense, I often get my younger brother involved too, and not against his will. We’ve baked cookies together, and once, adventurously, attempted shoo-fly pie. We were the only ones eating it afterwards, though; most people don’t have a strong tolerance for molasses. It was still delicious in small quantities.

I’m off to watch Doctor Who now. New episode tonight! Neil Gaiman’s airs next week as well. I’d also like to solemnly note that Elisabeth Sladen died a few weeks back. I would have made a post about it back then, however there is nothing particularly tea-related about that. Still, very sad, although I’ll admit that Courtney’s death affected me more strongly. I am sad that Sladen, being more known in NewWho fangroups, was more notably recognized. I suppose if Courtney had gotten a cameo in the new series, his would have been as well, but still.

Does anyone else find it very odd that two well-known Doctor Who companion actors died within months of each other, both from cancer no one knew they had? I wonder if it’s too soon to point out such an oddity, but I did doubt Sladen’s death initially, because I thought it may be a hoax due to the similarity. I recognize that illness is a very private matter, of course.