Recipes from Aunt Flora -- Russian Tea Cakes

Most of the recipes I've been trying out over the last year or so have been from the maternal side of my family, just because "daughters tend to be closer to their mothers'," women "end up in the kitchen," plus I actually knew my great-aunties on that side of the family better and saw them more often, not to mention they would actually talk about family genealogy. However, I'm going to be tapping into the paternal side of the tree for a bit.

One of Grumpa Max's aunts, Grandma Roa's sister, Flora, lived in California with her extended family. (Great) Aunt Flora's family put together a multi-generation, 10-family recipe book in 1987, and I finally got a copy of a copy of a copy courtesy of Aunt Cora. Remember, 1987 was pre-fancy word processors and digital reproductions of anything, so my copy of the copy of the copy is a bit hard to read, plus some of these typed (on a typewriter) recipes are full of interesting abbreviations and not so descriptive on some of the directions.

Aunt Flora is the only survivor of her siblings, and has outlived her husband, half of her children, and some of her nieces and nephews. Grandmary and GrumpaMax are headed to California later this month to see Aunt Flora, and I hope I can relay some questions to the cousins once and twice removed for clarification. Hopefully this open some dialogues between branches of the paternal family tree. I remember them being a fun group, pretty exotic to us shy New Englanders ...

Russian Tea Cakes, version 1 (as there is another family version in this cookbook)

1 cup butter
½ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup finely chopped nuts (used peanuts)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix butter, sugar and vanilla. Work in flour, salt, and nuts until dough holds together. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes, but not brown. Roll warm in [additional] powdered sugar, then cool.

Old-fashioned buttery sweet treat. Probably best off-set with coffee or strong tea.