quinn's place

christmas time is just not complete without these cookies. if you feel you don't have time to bake cookies, these are super easy, simple & delicious, and feel just like christmas to me.

i made this batch two ways. half are plain tea cakes and the other half have mini chocolate chips added.

i grew up on the plain tea cakes during the holidays, so as much as i do love me some chocolate chips, i'm a bit of a purist with these little cakes.

the plain & simple cakes are such a nostalgic treat for me that i always only have around christmas time. the chocolate chippers are like a completely different cookie in my mind. somehow that makes sense to me. maybe i'm just a kooky cookie lady.

my family always called these cookies "butter balls," which does not sound very glamorous or sophisticated, but is exactly what they are...balls of butter. i think they have a zillion names like russian tea cakes or mexican wedding cakes. i guess calling it a "tea cake" makes you feel like a little less of a santyclaus glutton than calling it a "butter ball."

make sure to cool the cookies all the way through after baking or the powdered sugar gets all sticky. i set mine outside for a little bit so they'd cool faster...but was eXtReMeLy paranoid that a squirrel or crow were going to divebomb down and gobble em up.

that was a very stressful 5 minutes. but quite the timesaver!

oh yummmmmm.

buttery soft melty pillows of crisp & fresh simple coooookie gooodnessssssss. also, i am a walnut lover. i know lots of people are haters, so leave em out if you dislike. i just think they make these cookies worth whiiiiile. and add chocolate chips to half of the dough, if you like.

because variety packs make life worth livin'.

Classic Tea Cakes, Two Ways

Makes 24 cookies

Time: 30-45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. almond extract
3 TB. powdered sugar
2 TB. milk
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips, optional
for coating: 1 cup powdered sugar

Instructions-

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a stand mixer or large mixing bowl, cream the butter well. Slowly add flour and mix on medium high between additions until a dough forms. Add the extracts, salt, 3 TB. powdered sugar, and milk. Mix until ingredients are just combined. Add the chopped walnuts and mix again.

If desired, scoop half of the dough into a separate bowl. Add chocolate chips to the dough in the original mixing bowl and stir just until combined. The second bowl will be for plain tea cakes.

Roll the dough into small balls (smaller than a golf ball). You want to roll them tightly so they do not crumble after baking. Place cookie dough balls on a baking sheet.

Bake for 13 minutes at 350 degrees F. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool completely (I set mine outside for about 5 minutes to speed up the cooling process). You want them to be all the way cool before rolling them in powdered sugar or it will melt and be sticky.

After the cookies are cool, roll each cookie in powdered sugar until it is coated. You can also add the powdered sugar to a small paper lunch bag and shake the cookies individually in the bag until coated.

Store in airtight containers lined with parchment. Share with friends & fam! These make excellent gifts in a cute holiday cookie tin! 😊

ho ho ho eat that butter ball, yo.

heyhey!! i took a little trip to hawaii recently with peter and a couple of friends. it was the best of times. you can't really go wrong in a hawaiian paradise!

^^^ just LOOK. so beautiful.

also...i feel like i fell off the earth on my bloggity and haven't posted since october - and that makes me sad! i have been SO busy, and as far as making new recipes goes....its freaking dark out all the time right now. i've been gone or busy for several weekends in a row and i'm excited to get back in the kitchen in the daylight of the weekend and cook baby cook & bake baby bake.

i've been on a few trips recently and have a major backlog of photos to post - its always really cathartic for me to get all these photos organized and out into the world. i definitely feel a mental back up when i have taken tons of photos that don't see the light of day!

so let me start with our week in MAUI, HAWAII!!

my best friend's ma & pa let us rent their condo in maui for the week, and it was a dream. shoutout D & B!! above is the view from the condo. 👌

we stayed on the west side of maui, just north of lahaina. it was nice to be so close to a cute little beach town full of restaurants and shops. ^^^ this is the aftermath of our delicious brekky at longhi's in lahaina. it has a view of the ocean and a cute airy ambiance with wide open windows.

one morning we got up around 2am to drive to the haleakala volcano to watch the sunrise. it was quite the life experience. none of us knew we were going to do this when packing for this trip...so we were pretty unprepared for the cold. so much cold.....

we got up to the summit parking lot around 4:30am and still had a bit of time before the sun came up. the parking lots get full, so you have to get there this early. we just slept in the car for a little bit and then walked up to the observatory area to freeze our faces off for an hour or so.

^^^you can see in the top photo of peter and me how miiiiiserable we are. it was SOOO cold. we even asked the locals the day before, "would you say its reeeeally cold...or is it just like kinda cold? i mean, we're from seattle soooooo..." thinking we were macho tough shit on the cold handling front. they were like, "yeah its really cold." um yeah. they right. it is FREEZING COLD, PEOPLE. pack your parkas and blankets if you intend to go up here for sunrise. this was also in november, so i don't know if the temperature changes at other times of the year.

we wore beach towels as scarves.

as soon as the sun came up...so much happier! even feeling one ray of sunshine on my face was amazing. but the view was beautiful, and so cool to be up above the clouds.

i would have liked to be up here for sunset. next time!! 😉

^^^ defrosting ourselves and checking out the wild cows as we drove back down the volcano.

nakalele blowhole! we walked a bit all over the hillside there where it was SO windy. it was an amazing view of the coastline, though! also, roadside coconuts from a local called moe!

group selfieeeee. not sure where i pulled my high school status backwards peace sign out from...haven't done that in years. ha! but a fun group pic nonetheless!!

we drove around to several different beaches all over the place. each of them were b e a u timus!

^^^ tacos at coconut's fish cafe in kihei (yummooo!), wow wow lemonade (double yummm & so refreshing!), shave ice at down the hatch in lahaina (also yummm! but mine was supposed to have booze and definitely did not. wahh.)!

we had so much fun at maui brewing in kihei! note the large scale connect 4 game in the background. so cool! that pink bev was a delicious boozy hibiscus kombucha. yum yum.

they also had live music and a woodfire pizza truck out front. i was ready to move in.

setting off on the road to hana! we went the reverse way that most people go and we think it was ideal because we didn't run into too many crowds along the way. head south driving counterclockwise along the road instead of heading east from the top of the island down and around clockwise. you also get the rougher, dryer parts of the road out of the way first.

into the bamboo forest we gooo....

bamboo forest was so cool!! definitely worth the time and the less than 2 mile hike/easy walk up. the sound of the bamboo clanking together in the breeze was pretty magical, too.

getting a bit sweaty on our walk was a-ok since we were planning to go for a dip in the seven sacred pools...

thanks, road to hana! you could definitely camp somewhere if you're up for it and spend more than one day exploring all there is to see along the road. there are a zillion adorable local island food stops like ice cream, pizza, banana bread, fruit stands, etc.

we stopped in paia for pizza and to chill after our longgg car ride around the island. ^^^this mai tai from charley's saloon in paia was the BEST one i had by far. i only actually had a few mai tais on our trip, but this one was just so so delicious.

^^^ lots of beach times and our ford explorer rental with all our day trippin' beach gear exploding out the back :) also pog and aloha maid and hawaiian sun bevs are what island vacation dreams are made of.

^^^ we had some amazing local fruit during the trip and also these smoothie acai bowls one morning. so refreshing.

^^^ can't forget hawaiian plate lunches. pete's favorite. the plate lunch photo above was from ono kau kau just north of lahaina. it was pretty darn good in my opinion! and i get tired of eating plate lunches like this after one day. so, bravo!

we were reaaally sad we didn't make it to star noodle in lahaina. looked so gooood and we've heard so much about it. this is why you need 10 days or 2 weeks in hawaii instead of just 1.😉

i loved kohola brewing in lahaina and was really impressed with all of their beers!! definitely check this place out if you're a beer drinker traveling to maui. my favorite was the 'talk story' pale ale. you go, kohola!