As part of The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies thing I’m doing, I’m mixing in a few family recipes.
This is our version of Mexican Wedding Cookies.
I always remembered them as being the one green cookie we made each year - though they don’t taste anything like green. It’s just food coloring after all.
In doing a bit of research on the name, this is a style of cookies originally called Russian Tea Cakes, but the name changed (and splintered) in the post-WWII Cold War period.
Mexican Wedding Cookies
Ingredients
- Two sticks of butter
- ¼ cup of granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Green food coloring
- 1 cup finely chopped pecans (or other nuts)
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- Confectioners sugar for rolling post-bake
Method
Preheat oven to 325 Fahrenheit.
Cream together the butter and sugar.
If you’re new to cookie baking: “creaming” means beating the butter and sugar together until it gets kind of light and fluffy. A mixer of some sort makes easy work of it, but you can break out a wooden spoon and make it happen eventually.
Add the vanilla and a bit of green food coloring.
Mix in the flour and chopped nut meats.
Roll the dough into 1-inch balls (a cookie scoop really helps standardize things).
Bake on a ungreased cookie sheet 18-20 minutes. They don’t spread much, so you only need an inch or so between them.
Let the cool for a few minutes before rolling in confectioners sugar while still warm.
