Favorite holiday cookie is debatable

A cookie by many names: What's not to like, with butter and ground nuts as the main ingredients?By Lee Svitak Dean

When I think of Russian tea cakes, I remember the week of making 700 cookies. Yes, I was crazed, even by my own standards. But big events do that to me. The occasion was a Senior Art Show for my daughter at her college in Iowa. It was December and she needed a holiday-themed spread of goodies to serve during the opening reception for the hungry crowd of students, faculty and supportive friends and family who would descend upon her art exhibit.

A week before the gathering, I reached for the worn "Betty Crocker's Cooky Book" (yes, that's the way Betty spelled it), and baked for seven nights in a row, 100 cookies per evening, after the dinner dishes were done. By week's end, I packed up the tins and Tupperware to be transported through snowy cornfields and along the two-lane highway to Luther College.

I baked other cookies, as well, of course. Even I wouldn't make 700 Russian tea cakes. But it's the tea cakes I remember, perhaps because they are a favorite of mine.

The little mounds of powdered sugar that look like snowballs have been on every family holiday cookie plate for as long as I can remember, whether it was at Grandma Nelson's house or Auntie Joan's or my mother's. December was the only time I saw the cookies, which may be part of the appeal -- those treats all wrapped up in fond memories of the hustle and bustle, warm hugs and crisp air that surrounded us as one relative after another opened the front door, stomped off the snow and settled into our merrymaking.

But it's not entirely the cookies' holiday appearance that prompts me to grab one mound, then another. It's that the tea cakes aren't very sweet. The dominant flavors are butter and ground nuts. Well, that and powdered sugar. Lots of powdered sugar. These may be the only cookies that need a warning: Do not inhale while eating (that powdered sugar dust can be dangerous!) -- and definitely don't eat while wearing black.

Then there's the name. Or, shall we say, the many names for the cookie: Russian tea cakes, Mexican wedding cakes, pecan sandies, pecan butter balls and butter balls.

They probably date back to medieval Arab cuisine, where even then these cookies were saved for special occasions and made of what would have been really expensive ingredients -- butter, sugar and nuts. The sweets were brought by the Moors to Spain, where they are called polvorones (based on the Spanish word for dust, polvo), and like any good food they spread across Europe and, eventually, crossed the ocean and landed in Mexico, from where they traveled across the New World.

Whether made of almonds, hazelnuts or pecans -- or cashews in the Philippines, macadamias in Hawaii -- the nutty treats belong at the world table.

And mine, of course. But this year I'll stick to a single batch.

A combo that can't be matched: Peanut butter and chocolate are the baker's way of saying "Enjoy"

By Rick Nelson

My dad or one of his brothers would gamely pull on an ill-fitting Santa suit -- their wingtips always gave them up as suburban stand-ins for the real St. Nick -- and my mom and aunts would prepare an enormous buffet potluck supper. Dessert was invariably lefse and cookies, and I quickly learned to gravitate toward the platter prepared by Aunt Marge (Hermstad), a woman who definitely knows her way around flour, eggs, butter and sugar.

We're talking about the late 1960s here, so forgive my cobwebbed memory, but I can recall ignoring julekake, toffee bars, date balls and other goodies in favor of what my pre-adolescent brain decided was the cookie embodiment of the True Meaning of Christmas. In other words, Marge's Peanut Butter Chocolate Kiss Cookies.

Their allure? Simple: An entire Hershey's Kiss, a wildly extravagent culinary gesture. The cookie itself, a tender, crackle-topped peanut butter treat, was a big draw, too, particularly since I practically lived on peanut butter (and, truth to tell, still do).

Now, all these years later, I continue to nurture a not-so-secret crush on the cookie also known as the Peanut Blossom, a Pillsbury Bake-Off winner from 1957. I've always enjoyed baking them, too. They come together in a snap, and they routinely elicit an, "Oh, my favorite," a phrase that bakers everywhere never tire of hearing.

Through trial and error I've discovered that the secret to Peanut Blossom success is to forgo the Jif and the Skippy in favor of an all-natural peanut butter; I prefer Parkers brand, made in Coon Rapids and stocked in the refrigerated-foods section of most supermarkets, but I've also liked the results from using the grind-to-order peanut butter available at many natural foods co-ops. I don't even mind the tedious task of extricating all of those Kisses from their foil wrappers, probably because it's an unwritten requirement that the cook sneak a few.

If I were the thoughtful nephew that she deserves, I'd replenish that Tupperware with Peanut Butter Chocolate Kiss Cookies, and get it over to her house, pronto. I'd better get baking.