Nana's Russian tea cookies
Holiday cookies can be divided into two categories. There are the picture-perfect cookies we see in the glossy magazines, the ones that make us oooh and ahhh over their dazzling designs and festive colors and look too pretty to eat.
Then there are your family’s favorite holiday cookies: They may not be Martha, but it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them.
This fall we asked readers of the L.A. Times Food section to tell us about those recipes for our first Holiday Cookie Bake-Off, and we asked the public to help us crowd-source their favorites.
More than 350 recipes were submitted online, and almost 80,000 votes were cast. We took the Top 50 vote getters to the folks at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, and students there baked them all off. L.A. Times Food editor Russ Parsons, deputy Food editor Betty Hallock and Times Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter spent one Saturday morning tasting every single one along with Lachlan Sands, dean of Cordon Bleu, Rebecca Marrs, director of career services at Cordon Bleu, and Porsche Reid, a student.
Despite six different judges with 50 cookies to choose from, there was little debate about the top 10 favorites, which were subjected to another round of testing in the L.A. Times Test Kitchen and are presented here.
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the butter, cream cheese and flour and pulse until it forms a soft ball. Halve the ball and sprinkle the halves with flour. Wrap the balls and refrigerate the dough overnight to chill.
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Fill a baking pan or shallow mixing bowl with powdered sugar to coat the finished cookies.
On a heavily floured surface, roll the dough to a thickness of one-eighth inch. Cut the dough into 3-inch thick rounds using a cookie cutter or glass. Spoon about 1 teaspoon jam in the center of each circle. Fold the circle into a moon shape and press the edges closed with your fingers (if the dough won’t seal, wet the edge with a little water to make it sticky). Use a fork to seal the edges completely.
Place the cookies about 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake until set but not browned, 8 to 10 minutes.
Remove the cookies from the oven and cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute, then place in the powdered sugar to coat.
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