Walnut Snowball Cookies

Festive holiday cookies made from a mixture of finely chopped walnuts, flour and vanilla, rolled into little balls and dusted with powdered sugar.

Prep time: 10 minutes  

Cook time: 35 minutes

Yield: Makes about 20 cookies.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup all-purpose or cake flour
• 1 1/2 cups walnuts, finely chopped
• 2-3 Tbsp sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 pound butter (at room temperature)
• Pinch of salt
• Powdered sugar, to coat (about 1 cup)

METHOD

1 Preheat the oven to 300°F and prepare a large cookie sheet.

2 Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, walnuts, salt, sugar) in a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract. Add the butter in little pieces, and combine everything together with your (clean!) hands until the mixture looks like a coarse meal with nut bits in it. Form the dough into small balls no larger than a walnut and place on the cookie sheet, spaced at least an inch apart from each other.

3 Bake for 35 minutes. When they are still warm, but cool enough to touch, roll the cookies in some powdered sugar. Set aside on a rack to cool completely. When cool, dust again in powdered sugar.