Not to be confused with Russian Tea Cakes (which are a delightfully short cookie of butter & nuts), this pastry is a symphony in the key of raspberry.
I don’t often wax rhapsodic about a recipe, but I’ll make an exception here. At one point, in the possibly distant past, a muse stepped out onto the landscape of a little Russian Jewish village. She whispered into the ear of a grandmother while she was baking, and a kitchen miracle happened. She took raspberry jam, sultanas, and pecans, and rolled them up in a barely-sweet, baking-powder leavened dough. Maybe it was a Hanukkah miracle. However it happened, the end result was heavenly. Years later, either that family, or perhaps the whole village, emigrated to Cleveland, and brought the recipe with them. Even though I’m just a goy, the Russian Tea Biscuits from Davis have always been one of my very favorite pastries.
In the days when every neighborhood still had a REAL bakery, you could find them all around Northeast Ohio, certainly at every Davis Bakery and Hough Bakery. Strangely, at least until very recently, the pastry has never wandered farther from its Cleveland roots than Akron, Ohio.
When I was first diagnosed as Celiac, this was one of the few things that would tempt me to cheat. I searched and searched, and it was years before I found a recipe. As it turns out, the recipe that I found online was from the parish cookbook of the church where I grew up as a kid. Of course, I had to immediately translate it into GF.
They may be a bit of work, but they are definitely worth every minute, and every calorie. Don’t skimp on any ingredient!
If you’re so minded, you can use apricot jam in the place of the raspberry for a change of pace, but the standard is definitely raspberry.
Yield: 16 pastries.
Ingredients:
Dough:
• 4 C All app-purpose Gluten Free Flour mix
(I use the Featherlight Flour Blend from Bette Hagman’s GF Cookbooks) x
• 1/2 C Brown Rice Flour
• 1 tsp Xanthan Gum
• 1 Tbs Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1/2 C oil
• 1/4 C melted butter
• 1/4 C orange juice
• 1 tsp grated orange rind
• 4 eggs (use 3 eggs plus 1 yolk, save 1 white for topping)
• 1 tsp vanilla
Filling:
• 18 oz jar Smuckers Raspbery Jam
• 1 1/2 C Chopped Pecans
• 2 C Sultanas
Topping:
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 C Coarse Sugar
• 1 Egg White, lightly beaten with 2 tsp water
Preparation:
Sift dry ingredients in bowl; make well in center and add the oil, butter, juice and rind, eggs, and vanilla.
Mix dough well and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Cut dough in half. Roll out half on well floured board into a 12″X16″ rectangle.
Spread with half of the jam, leaving one of the short ends uncovered for the last inch.
Sprinkle with half the nuts and half the raisins.
Starting at the other narrow end, very gently roll it into a log, leaving the seam on the bottom.
Cut into 2-3 inch slices. Use a VERY sharp, wet knife. Wipe the knife with a wet towel after each cut. Using the flat of the knife or a spatula, place slices upright, 2 inches apart on baking tray lined with parchment. Brush top with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar mixture. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
Bake 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
All content above ©2000, Steve Otlowski.
Bette Hagman’s Featherlight Flour Mix:
• 3 C Brown Rice Flour
• 3 C Corn Starch
• 3 C Tapioca Starch
• 3 Tbs Potato Flour (not potato starch)
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