Easy Mexican Wedding Cookies Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, Mexican wedding cookies. So let's get started. First off, preheat your oven to 350. This recipe comes together very fast. You'll also want to line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Now, the only bit of prep we have is to finely chop one cup of pecans. We wanna give these pecans a really nice, fine chop. The smaller they are, the better the dough will hold itself together. Now, we're not making pecan butter, but a nice, fine chop. So glad I brought out the large cutting board for this. My mom's from Mexico, and my dad is part Greek, so I grew up with this cookie and the Greek variation of them, curamberes, as well as the Russian variation, Russian tea cakes. They're all delicious, and they're very similar. Each cookie is basically a nice, crisp, melt-in-your-mouth shortbread filled with nuts and flavored. Mexican wedding cookies will traditionally use pecans, Russian tea cakes, walnuts, and curamberes, almonds. In the U.S., these cookies are often called snowballs, but really, I think of them as Mexican wedding cookies or povarones. All of them are not too sweet, but get a delicious coating of powdered sugar at the end. Listen, it's very rare that you have to finely chop a bunch of nuts, but I promise that it's worth it for this recipe. If you'd prefer, you could pop these into a food processor and give them a few whizzes, but I would still give them a final chop just to make sure there's no big pieces. Pulse, you pulse your food processor, you don't whiz it. Chop-a-chop-a. In retrospect, I would have used the food processor, but this was nice. I rarely give things this fine a chop. All right, set this aside, and now we're gonna grab a stand mixer or a big bowl if you're using a hand mixer. Into the bowl of my stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, I'm adding one cup, or 226 grams, of unsalted, room-temperature, nice and soft butter. One and two sticks. By the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. To the butter, I'm adding half a cup, or 60 grams, of powdered sugar, and I gave this a sift because my powdered sugar was nothing but lumps, and those do not mix well. So, always check your powdered sugar. Even if it's a brand new bag, it could be lump city. Not cool. To this mixture, we're adding a quarter teaspoon of salt for some contrast. Time to mix this up on medium for about two to three minutes until it's nice and light and fluffy. And if needed, you can definitely scrape the bowl down. Mexican wedding cookies are also known as polvorones, and they come from the word polvos, which means dust, basically. These have a really crumbly texture because of the shortbread and the nuts and the powdered sugar. You'll often find these served at weddings or during the holidays, but really, they're an anytime treat because they're a family favorite that is delicious. This cookie originated in Spain in the 16th century and made its way to Mexico and became popular there. Then it became popular in the U.S., and I would say today, these cookies are popular the world over. Although, one of the coolest things about having a food blog is hearing comments from people all around the world, and when I originally put this recipe up, it was one of my very first recipes when Preppy Kitchen started, I had so many interesting comments, like, okay, there's an Indonesian version of this, but we do this and this. Of course, there's a Greek version, there's the Russian version, but so many different cultures had their own twist on this recipe with shortbread and nuts, oftentimes finished off with powdered sugar, and they all sound delicious. Let me know in the comments if you have a family favorite that I should try. This is beautiful, light, and fluffy, so now it's time to add in 1 1⁄2 teaspoons of vanilla. And we're gonna mix this up until it's nice and combined. I have a crucial ingredient that we haven't talked about yet, and that's the flour. So I'm gonna use a scale today so I have the perfect amount. If you don't have a scale, please never scoop your flour up. I just added so much into this measuring cup, even if I take the top off. It is packed in here, and flour is not measured as a packed ingredient. Flour is measured as a fluffed up, fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, and sprinkled in ingredient with lots of air in between each little piece of wheat that's been milled down into flour. Then you level the surface off, and you should have a roughly correct amount. If you use a scale, this is much easier and more accurate. This recipe requires 1 3⁄4 cups of all-purpose flour, that's 210 grams. Give us a really quick scrape down. You'll notice I barely added any sugar in. 60 grams, that's nothing. This is not a very sweet cookie, except it's finished off with powdered sugar right out of the oven, so it has the perfect amount of sweetness for every bite. While mixing on lowest setting, gradually add in your flour. That looks great. This is nice and almost mixed. It's so close, but there's a little bit of butter right in the middle here, and there's a little bit of flour right on the edge of the bowl. So one final scrape. Back to mixing on low, and we can add our chopped pecans in. That looks great. I'm gonna finish this off by hand. Use your spatula and just give it one final pass. Perfect. Okay, this is gonna get just a little bit messy, but it's worth it. One-tablespoon-size scoops. They could be a bit larger, but what's important is that they're all roughly the same size. A little bit of a roll in the palm of your hand, and then place them an inch apart on that baking sheet. Continue scooping and rolling until all of your dough's been used up. These cookies go pretty fast. However, once baked, they last at room temperature for two weeks. Just put them in an airtight container, or you can freeze the dough right now before baking. So freeze it on a baking sheet, then pop that into a freezer bag, and that'll last for three months. You can bake them off as needed, or you can freeze the baked but uncoated cookies for up to three months. All of my cookie dough has been rolled out. It's time to wash your hands, and then we're gonna pop these into the oven for 12 to 15 minutes at 350. You'll know they're done when the bottoms are golden brown. In you go. Fresh out of the oven, these guys need to cool for about five minutes in the pan because they're very tender and extremely hot right now. However, if you let them cool too much, they will not accept the powdered sugar. So just five minutes, and in the meantime, you're gonna measure out about a cup or so of powdered sugar and if it's very lumpy, yes, you can give it a sift. Once they've had enough time to cool down, give them a good dusting of powdered sugar. Get them nice and coated, but don't worry about them having that full powdered sugar look because after 30 minutes, you're gonna re-roll them, and they're gonna be so good. If you've had these cookies or any variety of them, you know there is one extreme danger, especially for kids. You have a beautiful double-dusted cookie ready to enjoy, and you're like, ah. You breathe in with anticipation and immediately start choking on powdered sugar. So I will just caution you, make these cookies, make them often, enjoy them, share them, but do not breathe in when you're taking a bite. That's a recipe for disaster. Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough. You'll notice that as your cookies sit for a little bit, most of the powdered sugar disappears, and that's because they're basically steaming right now. All of the residual moisture is escaping as steam as these cookies cool, which is melting the powdered sugar, but that's fine because we will be re-rolling them once they're cool and they'll be beautiful and a little bit extra sweet. After 30 minutes, once your cookies are cool, a final roll in powdered sugar, and you'll see they're beautiful little snowballs. They're so pretty. Now you can see why snowballs is another name for these cookies. And just like that, your Mexican wedding cookies are ready to enjoy. That should have been two bites, but so worth it. Perfectly sweet, crumbly in the best way possible, really tender, and full of crunchy pecans. I hope you get a chance to make these truly delicious cookies. If you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my cookie playlist.