These little sugar coated Mexican Wedding cookies may be more closely associated with Christmas, but cookies are pretty much good year-round in my book! Especially these cookies. They are like little pecan packed shortbread cookies dusted in powdered sugar. Yum, right?!

I'm not sure what took me so long to make Mexican Wedding Cookies. They are so much easier to make than I originally thought. Like I said above, they are almost identical to a shortbread recipe - butter, sugar, and flour - with just the added ingredient if pecans.

First cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Then mix in the flour until you have a pretty dry dough. Something that looks kinda dry, but when pressed together forms a ball.

Next add in the nuts. You can use either walnuts or pecans. I actually used a mix of both because I was just short of pecans.

I ground up my nuts into a course meal, where some of the nuts were finely ground, and some were still in chunk form. I also measured my nuts after they were ground. So I had one and a half cups of ground nuts, not one and a half cups of whole nuts.

Next, because this dough is fairly dry, I recommend that you let it chill for at least 30 minutes so that all the moisture from the butter gets soaked into the flour and all the flavors meld together.

It will also be a bit easier to roll into balls once its chilled. I used my little cookie scooper to get evenly sized cookies.

Finally, its time to roll them in some sugar! This part is fun! Also, very messy. Your kitchen will look a little questionable when all is said and done.

I dropped let my cookies cool off a bit before I dropped them into the powdered sugar. The hot cookies will form a gummy sugary coating. I wanted a light powdery coating, so I let them cool until they were warm, but not to hot to handle.

And if thats not enough sugar for you, you can sprinkle even more on top. As you can see, that's what I did. I love me some sugar.

But don't worry about these being overly sweet. They are perfectly sweet. The cookies themselves actually have very little sugar in them. You bite in and have the initial taste of sugar, but the interior cookie is nutty and buttery!

Plus they are just so pretty! It's like they are the perfect cookie for a wedding. Who knew?

Recipe

Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 35 minutes

Makes 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, coarsely ground
1-2 cup powdered sugar for dusting

Instructions

In a large bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla. Mix in flour and salt. Once a loose dough forms, mix in pecans/walnuts. Dump dough out onto a large sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap up and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll a tablespoon of dough between the palm of your hands. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet about 1-2 inches apart. Bake for 15 minutes, until the bottoms begin to brown.
Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 5 to 10 minutes until they are warm, but not too hot to handle. Spread the remaining powdered sugar out on a small baking sheet or large plate. Roll each cookie in the powdered sugar until completely covered. Transfer to another piece of parchment to let cool completely.