Mexican Wedding Cookies!

BATMAN - COFFEE
Posted on 02/10/2013 by christineorwell
So when I was little I lived near a Vons Pavillion store and they had an amazing bakery. A-MAZ-ING. Sadly, I left Orange County to go live in the Mojave Desert when I was about 7 (in 1997). And thusly, moved away from the fabulousness of this Grocery Store Bakery. Which is all for the best, I suppose, because I hear the quality has taken a hardcore nosedive.

Anyway, there are two cookies that we still talk about in my family, 16 years later. One is my favorite: the best thumbprint cookie ever. It was soft, yet crumbly. Powdery almost, but not dry. The chocolate filling was rich, thick, and soft like a ganache. But not too rich. It was just perfect, and I have never found a recipe like it. *sadfaced* But at least the other cookie, it would seem, is much easier to replicate. A simple, classic:



Mexican Wedding Cookie!



This one is my mom's favorite. She always talks about how she wished we lived near a Vons Pavillion that still made these fresh on site. But alas, we do not. So I decided to make some for her. They are super easy, incredibly affordable, and absolutely delectable.




INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 Sticks Butter, Room Temperature
  • 2 cups Powdered Sugar
  • 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
  • 2 cups Flour
  • 1 cup Pecans, coarsely chopped
  • 1/8 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon



DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large bowl, beat the butter until light and fluffy.

2. Add 1/2 cup of the Powdered Sugar and the Vanilla Extract. Beat until well combined.

3. Beat in the Flour, and then the Pecans.

4. Divide dough in half and form each half into a ball. Wrap each ball in plastic and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

5. Preheat oven to 325°F

6 Whisk the remaining 1 1/2 cups of Powdered Sugar and Cinnamon together in a large, flat bowl.

7. Take one dough ball out of the refrigerator. Take 2 teaspoons of dough at a time, and roll into a ball using hands. Place balls 1/2 inch apart on large baking sheet. Bake cookies until golden brown on bottom and lightly golden on top. About 11 minutes. Repeat with second ball of dough.

8. Cool cookies for 5 minutes on the baking sheet. Then roll cookies in the Cinnamon Sugar, coat completely. Place cookies on racks to cool completely. After cookies have completely cooled (about an hour), roll in Cinnamon Sugar a second time, coat completely.



PICTURE TIME! :D

Very few ingredients:



Simple crumbly dough:


Rolled into two balls for chilling:


Made into smaller balls and cooked till lightly golden brown:




Double rolled in sugar:




Nomnomnom! :)


These cookies were insanely simple to make. And were gobbled up insanely fast. They were so delicious. I loved the crumbly quality they had. And the sugar coating is really smooth and melts in your mouth. I did think it melted a bit on the cookie though. They didn't look super covered. And when I went to touch them to see if they had cooled completely some sugar would come off in a chunk. So that's why I decided to give them a second roll the recipe didn't call for. I think it worked out very well. But you also wouldn't want to much powdered sugar (cause if you breathe it in, you'll choke. Lol) So it's probably just a ratio that each baker has to decide on for themselves. I also only did half the cookies in the cinnamon sugar, and went with plain sugar for the other half. It was nice to have two varieties.

I'm super excited about how these turned out. My mom told me I'm not allowed to make them to often, cause she won't be able to help herself. Lol. So yay! Success! :D I made my mom's favorite cookies and she loved it. I'll have to sneak bake some for her birthday in April. Even my dad (who doesn't like to eat sugar) had a couple every day till they were gone. I can't wait to do these again and maybe try a different coating. Perhaps vanilla bean powdered sugar? Or a touch of cocoa and cinnamon? We shall see!



Also posted over at my blog if anyone wants to check it out! :)
http://christinefrankenstein.blogspot.com/2013/02/mexican-wedding-cookies.html#more


Thanks so much for reading!
- Christine Frankenstein
Leave a Comment
lloydsgurl 11th-Feb-2013 06:51 am (UTC)
great cookies, i like them in the crescent shape

vons used to have the best butter cookies with sprinkles, iirc.
sprnaturalgrl 11th-Feb-2013 07:50 am (UTC)
Sounds very easy to do, just the way I like it! I love these cookies, too, so yummy.

May I ask where you got your Cherokee Rose dessert plate?
the_tao_of_lu 11th-Feb-2013 09:01 am (UTC)
Pretty Pretty!

I'm from OC as well and I used to go to the pavilion. I also moved away from Orange County- across country and back again to a different state. I used to buy the Mexican wedding cookies, but always had near death experiences with the accidental inhaling of the confectioner sugar while eating them.

I admit, I miss my beloved county- especially Balboa.

Edited at 2013-02-11 09:05 am (UTC)
eglantine_br 11th-Feb-2013 12:26 pm (UTC)
They look so good. I am going to make some today. Thank you for the recipe!
feliciakw 11th-Feb-2013 12:40 pm (UTC)
These are indeed num-licious. My mom makes them every year for Christmas (I think of them as a Christmas cookie for that reason). She colors hers green (I think because her mom did the same).
volovan 11th-Feb-2013 03:13 pm (UTC)
Im mexican and like you this cookies are Xmas cookies for me, every single year my mom made them to give away to friends and family, they are simple delicious
sashimi_salad 11th-Feb-2013 01:40 pm (UTC)
We have a similar version of those here, sometimes called sujee cookies, sometimes called Arab cookies (no idea why!). Instead of butter, we use ghee (which is, of course, pure clarified butter), plain flour, a bit of salt (mixed together in an approximate 1:2 ration of ghee:flour, rolled into little balls and baked until they turn white) and icing sugar to roll the cookies in as soon as they come out of the oven. Very fragile when hot, but the cookies are rich and melt in your mouth like you wouldn't believe!
shadwrayvn 11th-Feb-2013 02:41 pm (UTC)
I love making these cookies so much but instead of powdered sugar my grandma, my mom, & myself use sugar mixed with cinnamon since they aren't big fans of the powdered sugar unless we were making them for a wedding.
cygninae 11th-Feb-2013 05:19 pm (UTC)
May I declare my undying love for your posting this recipe?! I've bookmarked it and cannot wait to try it. And that's coming from a UK lass who has to convert sticks of butter to UK measurements!
wildrider 11th-Feb-2013 11:57 pm (UTC)
I understand completely what you mean -- we had a bakery near us when I was growing up who did a white cookie with little chocolate chips that was rich and soft but not moist/chewy, almost a butter cookie but not quite, and I've never found anything like it.

If you have a Safeway anywhere near you, they have a thumbprint cookie (brown-eyed Susans) that sound very like what you're describing -- I have gotten many people addicted to them!
cweb 12th-Feb-2013 07:34 am (UTC)
I don't know how you rolled them, but I've always put the sugar in a paper bag and put the cookies in one at a time, and gently shook them. Not much sugar flying about (and I always do two coats...the second one when they are a bit cooler).
prizewheel 12th-Feb-2013 08:28 pm (UTC)
Those look absolutely delicious.
wanyab 1st-Mar-2013 03:27 pm (UTC)
LOVED IT!
Leave a comment
This page was loaded May 23rd 2013, 1:57 pm GMT.