Russian Tea Surprise Cookies

These melt-in-your-mouth tea cookies are pure deliciousness with a chocolate surprise in the middle. Read this recipe to find out how to make your own!

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour

⅓ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon water

1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts, since they’re cheaper)

½ bag chocolate kisses or more

1 cup powdered sugar (the recipe calls for “sifted powdered sugar,” but I didn’t sift mine and they turned out just fine, so whatever is your preference.)

Directions:

1. First, preheat the oven to 325 °F.

2. Then, in a large bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds.

3. Add half of the flour, the sugar, the water, and the vanilla, and then beat these ingredients into the butter until all of them are fully combined.

4. Finally, beat in the rest of the flour.

5. Stir in the pecans or walnuts (however, these can be left out if you have a nut allergy or if you simply don’t like nuts in your cookies).

6. Now is the time to unwrap all those chocolate kisses. If you have a sibling to help you, that would be greatly appreciated, trust me – unless that sibling sneaks a chocolate kiss for herself while you’re not looking.

7. When the chocolate kisses are unwrapped, you can begin to form the dough around them, using about a tablespoon of dough for each chocolate kiss. The batter can be very crumbly, so you may have to pat it on there pretty hard. Make sure that the dough covers the entire chocolate kiss. No part of the kiss should show.

8. Place these cookies – there should be around 30 – on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the bottoms of the cookies are slightly golden brown. You may want to check them after 15 minutes to make sure they aren’t burning, since ovens bake differently.

9. After taking them out of the oven, cool the cookies on a wire rack.

10. Once they are cool, put the 1 cup of powdered sugar – or more – in a plastic baggy and gently shake the cookies in it, coating them in powdered sugar.

11. You’re done! Sit down and eat a cookie – you’ll be back for more.

Source of original recipe:

Little Women Hospitality Program by Anne Milligan Callaghan