Mexican Wedding Cookies, Russian Tea Cakes ... or Chrysalines? - Recipes & Cooking Advice - Eat Your Books

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Vanessa
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#1 Posted : Wednesday, December 7, 2022 8:46:04 PM(UTC)
Mexican wedding cookies and Russian tea cakes are nearly identical cookies. But in our family, we grew up calling these cookies chrysalines.

Not a word that Google recognizes!

Has anybody else here ever heard of chrysalines?
lkgrover
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#2 Posted : Thursday, December 8, 2022 1:19:37 PM(UTC)

I have also seen them called snowballs. Chrysalines is new to me. -- I am planning to make them this weekend, with either pecans or walnuts.

Fyretigger
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#3 Posted : Thursday, December 8, 2022 8:01:52 PM(UTC)

lkgrover;27270 wrote:
I have also seen them called snowballs. Chrysalines is new to me. -- I am planning to make them this weekend, with either pecans or walnuts.


My family called them Snowballs as well, though the actual recipe is for Polvorones.

redbird
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#4 Posted : Friday, December 9, 2022 10:15:03 AM(UTC)

They were always called snowballs in my family as well. Unfortunately my favorite recipe for them is titled "pecan or walnut crescent cookies" and it always takes me ages to locate it. 


eatyourbooks.com/library/recipes/625607/pecan-or-walnut-crescent-cookies


It's in numerous Cook's Illustrated publications. 


Does anyone else have a favorite recipe?

Fyretigger
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#5 Posted : Saturday, December 10, 2022 5:36:25 PM(UTC)

The Polvorone recipe came from either Woman's Day or Family Circle. The original copy is lost and is now simply part of the compiled family cookbook. My mom was originally exposed to them in her youth in rural Pennsylvania. Our recipe is very basic, just butter, confectioners sugar, flour salt and vanilla extract. Interestingly, where I grew up in southwestern Montana, so folks who made these included finely chopped butterscotch chips in them; I have no idea where that variation might have come from.

ellabee
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#6 Posted : Saturday, December 10, 2022 11:26:27 PM(UTC)
You all sent me to Diana Kennedy's Mexican Regional Cooking, which I've been reading at bedtime. I remembered seeing a drawing of the traditional wrapping for polvorones, white tissue-paper with twisted, fringey ends (like an English "Christmas cracker"). Maybe that has something to do with the 'chrysalines' name?

Anyway, it's now the recipe itself that's caught my eye: Kennedy has you _toast the flour_ at the same time as you toast the nuts, letting both cool completely before proceeding. !! New to me, but I'm not widely read on the baking side of things. I'd guess it increases the nuttiness of the cookie's flavor? Giving real consideration to subbing these for my traditional bourbon balls as the Christmas sweet treet. (Food processor-less, I chop walnuts into a fine meal by hand, so it's one or the other. This would let me skip the almost-as-tedious crushing of Nilla Wafers. OTOH there's the double oven time, toasting _and_baking, versus zero for the bb.)
ellabee
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#8 Posted : Sunday, December 11, 2022 12:08:49 AM(UTC)
Now obsessed by polvorones - Mexican wedding cookies - chrysalines. One of the newly indexed books in the Library is a collection of Christmas cookies & bars from the Vancouver Sun, so I immediately went to see if they included Mwc's & yes they do.

While there, I checked for a bourbon-ball-like confection, & again yes! It made me laugh out loud -- Every element of the 1950s bourbon balls we always had at Christmas, whose recipe was on the Karo bottle and which helped use up the annual shipment of pecans from my South Carolina grandmother, has been upgraded in a classically 21st century & West Coast way: corn syrup -> golden syrup, Nilla Wafers -> chocolate wafers, pecans -> ground almonds, cocoa powder -> instant espresso powder & bittersweet chocolate, bourbon -> Amaretto. Oh, and chocolate sprinkles which I'm assuming they're rolled in but I draw the line at that level of lily-gilding.

Anyway, back to poking around for polvorones on my own Bookshelf...
Barb_N
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#7 Posted : Monday, December 19, 2022 9:46:19 AM(UTC)

ellabee;27286 wrote:
You all sent me to Diana Kennedy's Mexican Regional Cooking, which I've been reading at bedtime. I remembered seeing a drawing of the traditional wrapping for polvorones, white tissue-paper with twisted, fringey ends (like an English "Christmas cracker"). Maybe that has something to do with the 'chrysalines' name? Anyway, it's now the recipe itself that's caught my eye: Kennedy has you _toast the flour_ at the same time as you toast the nuts, letting both cool completely before proceeding. !! New to me, but I'm not widely read on the baking side of things. I'd guess it increases the nuttiness of the cookie's flavor? Giving real consideration to subbing these for my traditional bourbon balls as the Christmas sweet treet. (Food processor-less, I chop walnuts into a fine meal by hand, so it's one or the other. This would let me skip the almost-as-tedious crushing of Nilla Wafers. OTOH there's the double oven time, toasting _and_baking, versus zero for the bb.)


Just a comment about toasting flour: I read about this on Food in Jars where it is used to make gravy. It enhances both the color and flavor since you toast it until brown.

ellabee
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#9 Posted : Monday, December 19, 2022 9:12:06 PM(UTC)
I've begun my polvorone adventure! (Just making the dough tonight, refrigerating it, and tomorrow portioning out the cookies & baking.). My recipe's a synthesis of Diana Kennedy (toasting the flour), Stella Parks at Serious Eats (toasting some of the powdered sugar), & The Kitchn (adding cinnamon & cayenne). Lacking a food processor, I did the annual meditative chopping-nuts-to-a-meal that I usually do for bourbon balls. I'll use a hand electric mixer to beat softened butter into the dry ingredients with an electric mixer, then wrap & chill. Our gas oven is on the fritz, so I'll be baking tomorrow in smaller-than-ideal batches in a convection oven -- on overturned 9" cake pans, which are the only metal baking pans that will fit into the little electric oven.

Thanks for the reassurance on toasting flour. I seem to remember reading somewhere that as flour browns during toasting, it loses some of its thickening power. Or maybe that's only when it's part of a roux, with fat? Not an issue for wedding cookies, in any case.
ellabee
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#10 Posted : Wednesday, December 21, 2022 8:15:04 PM(UTC)
Verdict: Mixed. Taste is good (nutty, rich, faintly spicy, just barely & lightly sweet). Texture is wrong. I had to beat in more shortening to get a workable dough, which may have toughened the proteins in the flour. And I overbaked. The result is more like a small lump of (tasty!) pie pastry rather than the tender, shattering melt-away bite that a polvorone should be. Something about the word 'chrysalines' really captures that feeling, by the way.

Chalk it up to rookie cookie baking. Next time I'm going to make them with a friend in her kitchen, where there's a food processor. We can do bourbon balls, too. They come together in a flash without all the hand chopping, crushing, & sifting.

I'm exchanging them without apology with our neighbors, who always offer a full-out cookie array. If pressed, I'm calling them "snow kringles" <g>.

Happy solstice to all!
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