It was a difficult choice choosing a recipe that was closest to my heart. There are so many recipes I enjoy cooking depending on how I feel. I find cooking and baking relaxing, therapeutic and it connects me to a time I spent working alongside my grandmother as a child. I love working with my hands, too. I chose to combine a Russian Tea cake and Mexican Wedding ball cooke. It is a simple recipe using few ingredients and embodies the flavors I love. It is a delicate cookie that is buttery, sweet, nutty, and pairs well with coffee. It is easily adaptable too.

Russian Tea cake/Mexican Wedding ball cookie recipe: 

2 cups organic flour (using a dry measure)                 Preheat oven to 400 degrees

1 cup walnuts and pecans pulsed in a food processor

1 cup salted butter (unsalted can be used)

1/3 of a cup of organic granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups organic confectioners’ sugar

Russian Tea Cake Photo attribution by Tamara Clark

Directions: Cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in vanilla. Sift in flour and mix. Add nuts and mix until they are well incorporated into the dough. Using a tablespoon, shape into 1 inch balls and place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9-12 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool. In a large bowl, add confectioners’ sugar and roll each cookie in the sugar until fully coated.

Every Christmas, my grandmother, Irma, would give each of her five grandchildren a large cake box containing a variety of cookies. Beautifully arranged into three layers and sectioned. Every year, I would anxiously await her gift of cookies over all other material goods. It was the gift I always opened first, and to receive them was simply divine. My grandma would bake 28 different types cookies or more and pack a half dozen of each in our boxes. My grandmother was a commercial baker for over forty years. She worked for Hostess and Ramona’s Bakery in San Pedro. Baking was inherent to her. Her parents were Russian and German immigrants who owned restaurants in Philadelphia, PA, and in later years, a delicatessen near USC.

For the approaching Christmas season, my grandma would strategically start her dough prepping process the day after Thanksgiving. She would start by making a few cookie dough’s a day, freeze them and repeat. She meticulously labeled her dough’s with name, weight and cooking time. Depending on the weight of the dough, she could determine the yield. In the days leading up to Christmas, she would start baking. Some of her cookies were the standard fare like ginger snaps, thumbprints, molasses and lemon shortbread’s. But the majority of her cookies were more unique like chrusciki, pin wheels,hamentashchen, checkerboards, almondcrescents,tassies, mandelbrot,vanillekipferl and bourbon balls. Her cookies were meticulously shaped and uniform. They were bite sized and absolutely perfect.

My grandma turned ninety five this past November. She has lost her appetite for food and her health is declining rapidly. I take my son to see his great grandmother as often as possible. What I have come to understand is that time is the greatest gift you can give to a person. When my grandma passes away, which will be a sad day for me, I will still have the recipes she has gifted me and a son that loves to help me in the kitchen.

Grandma Bush & Matthew 1/12/2018 Photo by Rochelle Tomic