Vegan Pecan Snowball Cookies
Vegan pecan snowball cookies - light, crumbly, melt-in-the mouth pecan shortbread cookies with a snowy powdered sugar coating. These Christmassy biscuits are easy to make with just 7 ingredients in one bowl and they taste amazing! You won't be able to stop at just one!
Servings 16 cookies
Ingredients
- 75 g (2 ¾ oz) pecans
- 115 g (½ cup) vegan block butter (NOT the spreadable kind. I use Naturli Vegan Block) slightly softened
- 35 g (¼ cup) icing (powdered) sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- pinch salt
- 140 g (1 cup + 2 Tablespoons) plain (all-purpose) flour
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- icing (powdered) sugar for coating
Instructions
- Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
- Place the pecans in a skillet or frying pan over a medium heat. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring often, until they smell toasty and have started to brown slightly.
- Remove from the heat and allow to cool then chop them very finely, either with a sharp knife or in a food processor. Aim for pieces about the size of a grain of rice.
- Cream together the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and salt for a couple of minutes until smooth and creamy.
- Add the flour and cinnamon and stir until no lumps of butter remain.
- Add the pecans and stir until they are well distributed. The mixture should be clumping together into a dough.
- Scoop up tablespoon amounts of dough and use your hands to roll them into balls. Place them slightly spaced apart the lined baking sheet.
- Pop the baking sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes, or the fridge for 30, while you preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/gas mark 4.
- Bake the cookies for 15-18 minutes (mine take 18) until they are lightly browned on the underside, they will still be fairly pale on top.
- Sift some icing sugar into a shallow bowl. Leave the cookies to cool on the tray for 5 minutes then roll them in the icing sugar to coat and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once the cookies are completely cold roll them in icing sugar again and store in an airtight container.
Notes
- See post above for tips, details, storage and freezing instructions and step-by-step photos.
- As with all of my baking recipes I really do recommend using the metric measurements with a digital scale rather than the cup conversions. Cups are a wildly inaccurate measuring system and you will get far better, more consistent results using a scale, not to mention that it is also easier and less messy than cups!
- Chilling the cookies before baking them helps to ensure that they don't spread. I don't recommend skipping this step!