Mexican Wedding Cookie Recipe
January 12, 2010
Mexican wedding cookies
Mexican wedding cookies are my all-time favorite. Every year my friend Kereese and her mom make dozens and dozens of these little bite-size balls for Christmas. Her family calls them ’snowballs’, and I’ve also heard of another alias: Russian tea cookies. To me, they’re Mexican wedding cookies, but I could be biased since I’m half-Mexican from my father’s side. I love these cookies so much that I had to have them for my wedding and Kereese’s mom painstakingly agreed to make 300 of them to be placed into a cookie jar for my wedding cookie table. Before we even took off on our honeymoon the next morning, I managed to stuff my belly full of them. I was in a major cookie comatose on our flight to Barcelona.
A year and a half has passed since then and I hadn’t seen them until Kereese brought over a small tin full of them, AND, our friends Mike and Miwa brought a whole batch over Christmas day. I guess it’s feast or famine with these little bites. I think I ate more of those cookies than I did real food. Seriously. I’m almost ashamed of myself. Almost. Now I have the recipe to make them any time of the year, which could be dangerous. I didn’t want to ruin perfection, so I tried to stick to the recipe completely, (a first for me) except for a minor adjustment to the flour. I cut the flour with whole wheat pastry flour, and honestly did not taste the difference!
The moral of this story is: please make these cookies. Thank you.
Pulse pecans in a food processor or blender.
After dough is all mixed up, shape it into a large ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour, or until firm.
Roll a tablespoon amount of dough into a ball and gently press it down, making a semi-flattened ball.
You can make these bigger or smaller, they melt in your mouth either way.
Ingredients : recipe adapted from our friend Miwa (Thank you!!!!!)
- 1 cup pecan pieces or halves
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar, divided
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, divided (I used half whole wheat pastry flour, and half regular all-purpose flour)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Directions
Place pecans in food processor. Process using on/off pulsing action until pecans are ground, but not pasty. Beat butter and 1/2 cup powdered sugar in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually add 1 cup flour, vanilla, and salt. Beat at low speed until well blended. Stir in remaining 1 cup flour and ground nuts with spoon. Shape dough into a large ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour, or until firm.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shape tablespoons of dough into 1-inch balls. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 12 to 15 minutes or until pale golden brown. Let cookies stand on cookie sheets 2 minutes. Meanwhile, place 1 cup powdered sugar in 13×9 (inches) glass dish. Transfer hot cookies to powdered sugar. Roll cookies in powdered sugar, coating well. Let cookies cool in sugar. Sift remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar over sugar-coated cookies before serving. Store tightly covered at room temperature or freeze up to 1 month.
Makes about 48 cookies, depending on size.
