Dear Kale Chronicles’ Readers and Friends,
It has been a long time since I sent you an update, much less a painting or a recipe. As Christmas Eve turned to Christmas Day I was standing in the kitchen at my mother’s house, baking a last batch of Russian teacakes, a traditional holiday cookie for us, consisting of butter, finely chopped walnuts, powdered sugar and enough flour to hold it all together. I had bought fresh walnuts in the shell from the Berkeley Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning and shelled them earlier on Monday evening while listening to Christmas carols on public television. Unfortunately, I had not consulted the recipe for amounts and had shelled just 1/2 cup when I needed 3/4 cup: as soon as I looked at the cookbook I went back to shelling nuts and wielding my chef’s knife.
It was an all-cookie Christmas this year, supplemented only with batches of Betsy’s delicious Italian Glazed Almonds. I did not have funds available for purchasing gifts in 2012, so I made them, Cocoa Shortbread and Pfefferneusse, Smitten Kitchen’s maple butter cookies, thin Moravian ginger cookies. For several days I busked in the Berkeley BART station in the morning and baked in the afternoon and evening, preparing a silver tray of cookies for my friend Elaine’s Chanukah party, packing a waxed cardboard box with almonds for another. When I wasn’t baking I was borrowing a guitar from Fat Dog at Subway Guitars who kindly lent me a Johnson to play while my beloved Harmony went to the guitar doctor, who treated her for a couple of serious cracks, rehearsing with Johnny for a gig at Arlington Cafe in my home town or giving my annual Christmas music party for which I prepared butternut squash soup, Mexican corn soup, Swedish rye bread and Finnish cardamom bread.
I remember standing at the bread board chopping resinous walnuts, seeing the chopped nuts in the metal measuring cup, the knife blade against the wood, thinking “This is not so bad a way to spend the evening.” True, it was late and I was behind on Christmas preparations, but I focused on the pleasure that a fresh tin of powder-sugar dusted cookies would bring my mother, Johnny (they are his favorite) and my sister-in-law who threatened to kill Johnny on Christmas Day if he had eaten them all. As the knife flashed through the nut meats, as the butter and sugar whirled in the mixer, as I rolled the cookie dough into small balls in the quiet night kitchen I thought how lucky I am:
1) My mother and brother are healthy and here to celebrate Christmas with this year.
2) I have a pleasant and safe home to live in.
3) I have found someone to love who loves me back.
4) I, too, am healthy.
5) My lone guitar has been safely repaired
6) Johnny and I played a gig together in my hometown to generally favorable responses and both ended the evening in the black financially.
7) Friends came to hear us play.
8) My song about our courtship, “Clueless,” continues to be a runaway hit and fun to play.
Honestly, I can’t remember more of those midnight thoughts now. Suffice it to say that I thought of my patient readers who have put up with my long absence from the blogosphere.
Just in case anyone has not had enough cookies over the past month or has never made Russian teacakes at home, I’ll share the recipe with you, slightly modified from that presented in our Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.
Russian Teacakes
Soften 1 cup (two sticks) of butter — I use one stick salted butter and one stick unsalted.
Shell and finely chop 3/4 cup fresh walnuts
Combine butter with 1/2 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract in electric mixer until creamy.
Slowly add 2 and 1/4 cups sifted flour, about 1/2 cup at a time, incorporating flour completely before each addition.
Mix in chopped nuts.
Chill dough as necessary. If you work late at night in a cold kitchen you will not need this step (or want to wait for the dough to chill either). Before baking, preheat oven to 400. Bake cookies for 10 to 12 minutes until some color shows on the bottom edges. Roll warm cookies carefully in powdered sugar — they are delicate and will develop mangy-looking spots where the butter comes through. Let cool and roll again, or sift or sprinkle more powdered sugar to cover each cookie. Store in airtight tins for up to a week or two. (Mom recommends providing other cookies for the family to eat if you want to keep Russian teacakes on hand very long).
Food notes: the fresher the walnuts, the better the cookie. ‘Nough said. If you live in the South you could try making them with local pecans. If you prefer to bake exclusively with unsalted butter you will want to add 1/4 tsp of salt to your sifted flour. I use unbleached flour in these. Mom likes all-purpose. I have never tried them with a whole-grain flour — part of their attraction is that they are snowy white and ethereal. We only eat them once a year….
Painting notes: The reign of the emperor’s new clothes is long. You’ll know I am painting again the day you see a new painting here. Also, it has been so long since I’ve taken a photo that I cannot find the charger for my camera battery. Oops.
Writing classes: I will be teaching a six-week writing practice group on Tuesday nights in the East Bay starting January 8, 2012. My teacher Natalie Goldberg developed writing practice as a way to help people get their real thoughts on paper. For more information, see my ad on craigslist.
Happy New Year to everybody! See you again in 2013. –Sharyn
Your describing the making of these cookies has me longing to leave the office and be in the kitchen! That, Sharyn, expresses how well you wrote this post, I so envy you good writers!! I wish you a very happy holiday season and the best of all for the New Year!
Thank you, Linda. I wish you could be in the kitchen, too! Best wishes for a grand new year.
So good to see you and to hear about the simple little pleasures that make you feel so fortunate. You remind me that it is truly our surroundings and the connections we share that make this time of year special. We can say this, but still be blind to it as we get lost in the rush of shopping and things. It takes presence of mind to actually live it; the sort of presence of mind you bring to your kitchen when you describe a recipe. It is rhythmic, peaceful and grounded. I do not know how else to say it, but this is what comes to mind. Wishing you an especially prosperous new year.
Those kinds of presents are so much more than money can buy.
Russian tea cakes are favorites for my family too. We make a variation that uses honey. Best wishes for a bright and happy New Year!
Glad to read that things are going well for you, Sharyn.
Wishing you, your Mother, and your Beau a wonder-filled 2013.
It’s so nice to hear from you, Sharyn. They rhythms of cracking walnuts, baking cookies as personal and welcome gifts, and expressing such gratitude for family and your new love, all make for what sounds like wonderful holiday spirit. I hope your writing class is very successful. I wish I lived closer! 🙂
It’s nice to hear from you again, Sharyn and I’m glad things are looking up. Hope you had a Merry Christmas and hope that you and your family have a safe, happy and prosperous new year.
So happy that you enjoyed such a lovely Christmas, Sharyn! And thank you so much for the shout out. We made most of our gifts this year as well, and I must have made at least six batches of almonds as well as all the cookies I posted on the blog this year. Wishing you a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!
Really happy to see this post, Sharyn. And it led me to your Swedish rye bread recipe and then I went back and reread your recipe for black bread. Result: I’m baking the black bread tomorrow and will try the Swedish rye bread later this week or over the next weekend. (I have just gotten in a great big bag of rye flour.) The Russian teacakes are one of my favorite winter cookies. I have a surfeit of pecans and may try with those. Happy New Year!
I love Swedish rye (aka “limpa”). It is a sweet rye with raisins and lots of orange though — not to everyone’s taste.
It is good to hear that you have been busy and having fun with life. Good luck on your 6 week writing seminar course. Take Care, BAM
Thank you, BAM. Somehow we do manage to keep having fun.
You are the true spirit of Christmas Sharyn – I have been tardy in my readings but having read this post of yours, late but inspired by your loving words, I am filled with inspiration. I wish you and your loved ones a happy, creative and peaceful new year. May all of your troubles blow away in the winds of change and may all of your dreams come true…
Thank you for your kind words, John. Johnny and I got into a bit of a scrape on December 30th (car accident), so I have more stories to tell. I hope the new year brings good new things to everybody.
Goodness! Hope you are both okay. Look forward to hearing about your escapades…
I’ve missed you, and love the sentiment of your words. Happy New Year to you, friend!
Thank you, Miss B. I’ll catch up with what you are up to soon. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have more stories to tell.
Scott and I can vouch for those teacakes. Kale Chronicles readers, you really have no idea of the glorious profusion of cookies at the Dimmick household. They are true gifts. We made a delightful (for us, anyway) post-Christmas visit and came away rich in cookies beyond our wildest dreams. The side table on which the tins of cookies are set is a real treasure chest of old and new airtight metal tins filled with surprises. Something about the home-crafted cookies is just infinitely satisfying. The sugar cookies are super-thin and crispy and coated with colored sugar… just a dream. And the Russian teacakes! Scott lets me eat all of those because I am so fond of them. Each one is a little white bomb of yum. Thank you, Sharyn!
You are welcome, Suzanne. I had a plate of cookies with my afternoon tea today — they are going fast, so to be gone until next December.
I loved your description of making the cookies..I felt I was right there with you in the kitchen 🙂
Counting your blessings is a wonderful way to end a year and start another. I hope 2013 brings you many more blessings and joys
Thank you, Sawsan.
Morning Sharyn.. I must have missed this post. I was checking in for a while to see if you had put anything up.. I hope things are still looking late-night-kitchen-cooking-cookie-ish, I love Jonny because he makes you happy.. good for you.. you are such a Doer.. you DO stuff – I like that in a woman – have a great day.. c
Hi Celi,
I’m hoping to post again soon, once I find my camera battery recharger, which is somewhere in this room — it’s one of those things I always put away in the same place: when I don’t, I get to move many, many objects in order to unearth it. But I have a soup I am ready to write about. Stay tuned.
Sharyn, I always thought busking in the tube looked like such fun. Unfortunately, I never played an instrument well enough to do it. Just occurred to me, maybe the people would pay me to STOP playing! 😀 The assortment of cookies sounds wonderful, and I applaud you for making gifts.
Almost a month since you posted this. I trust you are enjoying the beginning of the new year and look forward to finding an update or two here, if you feel so inclined. Be well.
Hi Granny. The new year has been challenging and busy. Why no posts? I have been looking for my camera battery recharger for days and days. No camera, no posts. Other than that I have been busy with Johnny and with mere survival. One of these days I’ll either find my charger or be able to buy a new one, but don’t hold your breath. Thanks for checking in. — Sharyn
Hello Sharyn,
Just catching up on my blog reading as I seem to have missed your post as I think it was only 2 days before my wedding… can’t believe it’s now March! I love the sound of Russian Teacakes!
Thanks, Lauren, for being such a loyal reader. I hope the wedding (and married life) was/is wonderful.