I am not Russian. But my friend Courtney is.

So with her tasting expertise, I prepared a gluten-free variation of the snowball-of-a-cookie that is the classic Russian teacake.

This sounds more complicated than it is.

To be honest, tweaking the average Russian teacake recipe was almost unnecessary for making it gluten-free. These cookies traditionally have no rising agent, making them a great candidate for gluten-free conversion. The only real change that I made to the traditional Russian teacake recipe was swapping the flour for the gluten-free Bob’s Red Mill baking flour. Easy peasy.

Something you will notice when making these babies: the dough will be crumbly and you will fear that this will turn out to be a baking failure. Just relax.

When you smush the dough together, there should be enough butter in the mixture to make it coagulate. It might take a little force to shape them into 1-inch balls- they are a crumbly cookie- but this is exactly how they are supposed to be.

These puffballs are probably one of the simplest cookies to make in terms of ingredients, but one of the most finicky when it comes to formation. Nonetheless, they are worth it! The powdered sugar really gives them the sweetness they need with the shortbread flavor.