Working Girl Cooks!

So I spent the whole day last Sunday baking cookies to give as gifts to my co-workers and my TDH’s co-workers. I had previously told you what holiday cookies I planned to bake in my Holiday Cookie List Post.

I decided to start tackling the Mexican wedding cookie’s first. I don’t remember the first time I tried one of these cookies. I just know they are called by many different names and there are several different varieties. I know them as Mexican wedding cookies, but they can also be called snowball cookies, Italian wedding cookies, Russian Tea Cakes. Apparently they are multi-cultural. Anyways, even though I don’t remember the first time I tried one of these cookies I know I’ve loved them from the first bite. They are just the perfect amount of sweet, and the texture is unlike any cookie I have ever tried. I have never made these myself and was really excited to give it a try.

They are really easy to make and only require a few inexpensive ingredients: Butter, Powdered Sugar, Flour, and Ground Almonds. The only difference between all the cookies named above are the type of ground nut that goes into them. I’ve seen these made with ground pecan, ground walnut, but my favorite is almond. I used this recipe here but used powdered sugar in place of the 1/2 cup white sugar it call for and added 2 teaspoons of almond extract in place of the water. I also used 1 cup of finely ground almonds instead of chopped almonds.

What is amazing to me about these cookies is the transformation that takes place between when they come out of the oven and when they get coated in powdered sugar. Out of the oven they are slightly bland and tasteless. Crumbly and Stiff.

When they get coated in powdered sugar they turn into these little balls of snowy fluff. They are sweet and smooth and everything you could want in a cookie. The first bite I took of my finished cookie brought back so many memories for me. They tasted just as I remembered, just as they tasted at the cookie shop or the holiday party or where ever I would stumble upon them.

These were winners in my book and I will definitely make them again!