Mammy's Swedish Tea Cakes

Over the next week or two I'm going to try to get a lot of the family favorite Christmas cookie and candy recipes out here.

We used to do a lot of baking between Thanksgiving and Christmas to give away to friends and family. In fact, Thanksgiving Day was usually the day we would pull out the recipe tin and make the shopping list of the special ingredients that would be needed to get us through the "baking season". So, I will try to come up with that list for tomorrow's blog, but meantime, this recipe to get you started thinking about the project.

I remember my grandmother making these. She always call them Swedish Tea Cakes, but I've also heard them called Mexican Wedding Cakes, so you can take your choice of which ethnicity you want to use!

This is a really easy recipe, just requires a few ingredients, and a little time for the baking.

I've not found any real good way to make these "healthy", but since they are small, if you can exercise some self-control, you can still enjoy them!


Mammy's Swedish Tea Cakes

1 cup butter at room temperature
½ cup powdered sugar plus more for rolling cookies in
1 tsp vanilla
1 ¾ cups flour
1 cup ground pecans

Cream butter and sugar until smooth.

Add vanilla and mix well.

Add flour a little at a time and blend well.

Fold in nuts with a spatula.

Roll small balls of dough (about 1 tablespoon each) and place on parchment paper or silpat about 1 inch apart.

Bake at 275 degrees for 45 minutes (be careful not to let them brown very much).

As soon as they come out of the oven, roll them in powdered sugar.