QUING Parties at the Palace with SNOWBALLS

My mom has hidden delicious, important, expensive or rare treasures in a ‘safe place’ for fifty years. The location of the ‘safe place’? No one knows. But we always knew where she hid the Christmas cookies. She’d place them in Christmas tins (obvious) and hide them behind the buffet in the dining room (obviouser.) Sneaking into those tins quietly took some practice, because they’d crimp and rattle when opened.  But every Christmas, six kids became pros at stealing cookies, and blaming it on someone else.

A dozen cookie tins were stuffed behind mom's buffet every Christmas. The cookie tin that housed the SNOWBALLS was the tin we found first and visited most often; leaving powdered sugar trails across the dining room carpet. Poor Santa never had a single snowball on his plate of cookies, because there were never any left by Christmas Eve. I make him his own batch every year now, as a penance for stealing them from him all those years ago.

SNOWBALLS are also my BBF’s favorite Christmas cookie- and since he is almost as kind, loving and magical as Santa himself, it makes me love these cookies even more.       

It’s Christmastime. Skip the stress. Bake the cookies.  GUSTARE!

SNOWBALLS

1 cup of salted butter
¼ cup powdered sugar- sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ½ cups unbleached flour- sifted
½ cup finely chopped pecans

Bake whole pecans in 350 degree oven for 8 minutes.  Cool and chop till fine.  

Reduce heat to 325 degrees.  Melt butter in heavy saucepan over low heat until light brown. Pour into glass bowl- scraping bottom of pan- and chill till firm. Cream browned butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and beat till smooth. Gradually add flour and nuts. Stir until mixture is sandy. Shape dough into a ball, pressing it together, bit by bit, with the back of a spatula, or your fingers and palms. The dough is very dry, so be patient. (Mom used to add a splash of milk to hold the dough together. I like these cookies as dry as possible, so I skip the milk.) Wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour.  Use a spoon to break bits of dough off the ball, and shape into one inch snowballs.

Bake 15 minutes until the bottom of the cookies is golden brown. Roll in sifted powdered sugar. Hide in a really good spot!