bake it, gift it: snowball cookie recipe

Yesterday I posted my "make it, gift it" DIY button rings that I made for a Holiday Gift Swap. Today I am sharing my recipe for the The Great Food Blogger's Cookie Swap from Love and Olive Oil and The Little Kitchen.

I wanted to make a family recipe, one given to my grandmother from her friend and my mother's godmother. This recipe goes by many names, but the one most appropriate for the season is Snowballs. They are also called Viennese Crescents when shaped slightly differently and Mexican Wedding Cookies when made with vanilla in place of the almond extract. I think the almond gives them a great not-too-sweet flavor. 

[The dough]

It's important to note that the dough is very very crumbly. You will be forming these with your hand and have to really squish the dough together. I was taking a fistful of crumbly dough to end up with the cookies you see below.

[Before baking]

[Cookies just out of the oven]

Snowballs
½ cup butter, softened

¼ cup confectioners’ sugar 

1 cup all-purpose flour 

1 tsp. almond extract 

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup blanched slivered almonds, ground

Mix all ingredients together.  Shape into small balls, about 2-4 bites per cookie. These do not rise or change shape, so you can fit about 20 on a baking sheet.  Bake at 325 degrees on greased cookie sheet for 20-22 minutes.  When mostly cooled, roll in conf. sugar before serving. 

Yield:18 cookies

Recipe is easily doubled. Cookie size can also be reduced, decrease baking time accordingly.  

[Ready to coat in powdered sugar]

[All done!]

ultimate super bowl cookies

As you may have been aware, there was a very important football game on Sunday. I'm not much of a football girl (but just try following my Twitter feed in March) but am not one to turn down social events that call for arriving with freshly made treats. Earlier in the week I found a recipe for Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. Perfect.

I'm not great at following recipes, but tried to replicate this one according to the directions. Of course, I couldn't find the vanilla when I needed to (I know it's around here somewhere) so a quick search on the interwebs suggested using vanilla flavored liquor. Luckily my roommate has vanilla vodka so one tablespoon of booze went into the cookies. Starting out the dough looked really dry, I even added some water midway through rolling the cookies. Next time I would definitely consider adding a tablespoon or two of milk. Only major change I would make to the recipe.

[Cookie dough. With mini chocolate chips.]

[Key ingredient]

[Assembling the cookies]

The cookies were scarfed down too fast for me to remember to take a photo, so drool over this images from Picky Palate:

[Yum]

Now go make these cookies. But have lots of friends to share them with because you won't want to eat more than one in a night.