How to Make Mexican Wedding Cookies Polvorones

Today I'm gonna show you how to make a favorite treat of mine. These are Mexican wedding cookies, but hold everything, because depending on where you're from, they can be called any number of things. I'm part Greek, so in my family, we also call them corampieres. These can be made in so many different permutations. I have mine with almond flour and a little bit of vanilla, but some people use rose water, some people use pistachios, walnuts, and they're all delicious. This is a really easy recipe that comes together in a snap, so let's get started. I'm adding one cup or 226 grams of unsalted room temperature butter into my standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Boom. We're basically making buttercream to start off with, but it turns into a cookie magically. Cream it up. Butter's nice and creamy. We're gonna add in three quarters of a cup of confectioner's sugar now. Let's just add that in there in stages or all at once, and then mix on low. Once it's going, add in a quarter teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Okay, that's good. Now for the dry ingredients. I have three quarters of a cup of almond meal here, and I am gonna be sifting this. Almond flour or almond meal is notorious for being lumpy, so let's just give it a sift. Sift, sift, sift, sift, sift. I'm just in the habit of doing this for making macaroons or macarons, and you wanna sift all of your ingredients over and over again. This cookie is much more forgiving, so if you're short on time, skip it, just toss it in. It's not a big deal, but there are these giant almond pieces, which could be a plus or a minus if you like creamy or chunky. Add it in. Why not take a second and scrape the bowl down? Let's just give it a nice scrape. Now for our final ingredient, two and a half cups of all-purpose flour. This is the magic that'll turn this kind of like delicious goo into a cookie batter, so just slowly add this in while this is mixing on low. Just a cascade of flour. Scrape it down. Final mix. Okay, that's it. This looks maybe a bit rough, but it shapes into a dough really easily, and, okay, this is the fun part. We're gonna start shaping these up. Now, my mom is from Mexico, my dad was Greek, and in Mexico, these are called Mexican wedding cookies, but in Greece, they're called corompieres, and that's a horrible pronunciation. All my fellow Greeks out there, I'm so sorry. It's been many years since my last Greek language class, but anyways, they're really popular cookies in Greece around Christmas time, and the fun thing is that like every single culture has their version of these cookies. Some of them add rosewater, some of them add pistachios. It is every single kind of permutation for this cookie exists in the world, and it's amazing. All right, we're gonna shape these out, put them onto our baking sheet, and get those in the oven, and we're gonna be basically done. In my family, we have three shapes for these cookies. We have bars, we have little balls, and then we have these little horseshoe crescent-shaped things, and I don't know if that's how it's supposed to be, but it's how it happens in the Canel household. Now, it's my way or the highway. Okay, we have a ball, and then the crescent. Shape it up, and this is gonna get completely drenched in powdered sugar, so don't worry if there's a little crack or it doesn't look perfect. No one's gonna notice. So aside from this recipe being basically global and having all these different variations, which I love, I love that it's a family tradition in my house because when I'm making these right now, it reminds me of my mom and being little with her in the kitchen and how she would help me and show me how to do things, and it literally makes me wanna pick up the phone and give her a call, and my kids are outside right now. I was like, hey, kids. So I can't wait for them to be old enough to do this with me and have those memories, too. If you want your cookies to look more perfect, you're gonna give them a better roll. Roll them on the counter, roll them in your hands a little bit more, and they'll be less hand-shaped in case you want things to be perfect-looking. But you gotta press them together a bit, too. So you have to press, press, press, and then roll, roll, roll. And you get a nice little ball. My first batch of cookies is ready to go into the oven. 375 for 10 to 12 minutes. These are gonna be good. Okay, into the oven. While these are piping hot out of the oven, I am tossing them in powdered sugar. Carefully, you don't wanna break the cookies, but they do have to get kind of pressed in a bit. And the cookies themselves are not that sweet, so this powdered sugar on the outside really makes some magic happen. Everybody who knows these cookies will agree with me. Trust me. The only thing is you have to be careful not to breathe in when you take a bite, because you will get the choking powdered sugar in your throat situation. It's kind of like as they're steaming out a bit, you get that stickiness for the powdered sugar to hold onto. So at my house, we also make versions of this with ground walnuts, and that is pretty darn good, too. So if you don't like almonds, just grind up some walnuts or give them a really, really, really fine chop, and then substitute that in, and you will be in heaven. Okay, round two. That's my burnt one. I like burnt cookies. Okay, hot, very, very hot. I like to bury mine in powdered sugar, just tamp it down a bit, roll it around, and then you know it's ready. The only thing we have to do at the very end of this is give it a very light dusting of powdered sugar, because more sugar. Okay, dust, dust. They're so pretty, they're like little snowy treats. Voila, all done. So excited to try this out, see how it compares to all of my memories. Is the hype real? Mm, it is real. This is so good. It really is like a crunch melt, crunch melt. It just dissolves in your mouth, and it is so good. Oh my gosh, the almond, and the weird thing is, it's not that sweet. Even though it's completely covered in confectioner sugar, it is not a super sweet cookie. You gotta trust me on this. Perfect for a little coffee or tea in the morning, and yes, you'll be snacking on them all through the day, so be prepared to make an extra batch. All right, thanks so much for watching. I hope you get a chance to make this recipe. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below, and don't forget, hit that like button and subscribe.