Pecan Snowballs

Pecan snowballs, also called Mexican Wedding Cookies, are one of my absolute favorites. They’re made with the perfect combination of butter, ground nuts, flour, and powdered sugar to make them instantly crumble and melt away on your tongue with each bite. They’re nice and small too, so you can eat a couple and not feel too guilty.  Sometimes I have trouble getting the powdered sugar to coat the cookies evenly, but this never affects their deliciousness so I just tolerate it, and re-dust the cookies if I want them to look especially pretty.

RECIPE: Pecan Snowballs
Makes about 48 cookies

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted, then finely chopped or ground
1-2 cups powdered sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 325F. In a medium mixing bowl, beat butter and 1/2 cup powdered sugar on medium-high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Add flour and pecans and stir until combined.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place balls 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in preheated oven for 16-18 minutes or until bottoms are lightly brown. Place cookie sheets on wire racks and let cookies cool 5 minutes.

Place 1 cup of powdered sugar in a shallow dish and roll warm cookies in powdered sugar to coat. Tossing them in the sugar twice sometimes help the sugar stick. Cool completely. Some of the sugar will come off, so if you are worried about the look of the cookies, you could re-dust the cookies with powdered sugar after you put them out on a cookie plate.

STORAGE:
Store cookies in air-tight containers at room temperature.