Pecan Snowball Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

These little bite-sized pecan snowball cookies are buttery, tender and just the right amount of sweet. They practically melt in your mouth.

I’m calling these pecan snowball cookies because they are chock full of pecans and do look like little snowballs, but all across the interwebs, similar recipes are known as Mexican wedding cookies, biscochitos, polvorones, Russian tea cakes, Italian wedding cookies, Kourabiedes or Greek wedding cookies or butterballs.

Whatever you decide to call them, I hope you do give them a try. This recipe is a fun one to make with children. They love forming the little balls and then rolling the cookies in the icing sugar (twice!) after they’re baked.

Pecan Snowball Cookies

As you can tell from the recipe, the cookie dough isn’t very sweet because sugar is added outside with the double rolling, making these perfect, just as they are. If you are feeling adventurous, you might also want to try my Mexican chocolate (with cinnamon) wedding cookies too.

Ingredients – makes 6 dozen cookies
For the cookie dough:
2 cups, finely chopped, or 210g pecans
2/3 cup or 83g icing sugar
1 cup or 226g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour

For coating cookies:
1 cup or 125g powdered sugar

Method
Preheat your oven to 325°F or 163°C and prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper or silicone liners.

Place the pecans and powdered sugar in a food processor. Pulse the pecans and icing sugar, until the nuts are fairly finely ground with just a few bigger bits.

In the bowl of your mixer, add the pecan mixture, the butter, vanilla and salt. Beat until everything is well combined.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula then add half of the flour mixture to the mixer bowl.

Mix on low speed until everything is well incorporated. Repeat with the second half of the flour, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula before and after the addition.

Scoop up spoonfuls of the dough and roll the dough between the palms of your hands into balls about 1 in or 2.5cm big. Place the balls on the prepared cookie sheet spaced about 2 inches or 5cm apart.

Keep any balls that don’t fit in the first batch on parchment paper in the refrigerator if your kitchen is warm.

Bake the cookies for about 18 to 20 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack and let them cool for five minutes.

While they bake, sift a cup of powdered sugar into a mixing bowl. When the cookies have cooled for about five minutes, roll them one or two at a time in the icing sugar to coat completely.

Leave to cool completely then roll them in the sugar again.

Enjoy!

After a hiatus of several months, I am delighted that my Cookie Exchange friends are baking together again. Many thanks to our leader, Laura of The Spiced Life, for organizing us this month. Check out all the other great seasonal cookies we are sharing today!

• Pecan Snowball Cookies from Food Lust People Love
• Chocolate Spritz Christmas Tree Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Espresso Sable Sandwiches with Blonde Chocolate Filling from The Spiced Life
• Gevulde Speculaas - Dutch Spiced Cookies from Spiceroots

Creative Cookie Exchange is a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board!

Pin these Pecan Snowball Cookies! 

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Easter Candy Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Never mind that Easter bunny left too many sweets. This recipe will turn that excess into buttery Easter Candy Cookies your whole family will love.

I must confess that since our daughters left home for college, we have really tapered off on the buying of Easter candy. The first couple of years, I made up one sparse basket for their father and me to share. But the last few years I haven’t even done that.

This year, HOWEVER, my Creative Cookie Exchange friends decided that cookies with leftover Easter candy would be our April theme, so I went out and bought some candy. I couldn’t believe how many new varieties there were! M&Ms Eggs filled with caramel, peanut butter or hazelnut spread, just to name three treats I had never seen before.

On Saturday my whole family came round for a crawfish boil and these cookies were our dessert. They were very popular!

Easter Candy Cookies

For these cookies I used a mix of the peanut butter filled M&M eggs and the caramel filled M&Ms, which looked like eggs as well, though the packaging didn’t say that. It was an excellent combo! You can use the same amount of your favorite Easter candy. This recipe was adapted from one on Thanksgiving.com.

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 170g unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup, packed, or 150g light brown sugar
1/4 cup or 50g granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups or 360g M&M eggs, assorted
To decorate: pastel sprinkles

Method
Beat the  butter, sugars and egg together with the vanilla, until the mixture is smooth and the sugar is no longer gritty between your fingers.

In another bowl, mix together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt. Sift the mixture into the creamed butter and sugar bowl.

Beat again until combined. Fold in the Easter candy.

Use a scoop to divide the dough into balls and place them on a cookie sheet. Pop them in the freezer for 30 minutes.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven and line your cookie sheets with baking parchment. Place the dough balls at least three inches apart on the parchment. Use a pastry brush to wet the top of the dough balls with water and add the sprinkles.

Bake in the preheated oven for 13 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

Leave to cool in the pan then remove to a plate with a spatula. These cookies are quite soft and oh-so-moreish!

Enjoy!

Check out the two other recipes by Creative Cookie Exchange friends are sharing. Many thanks to this month's host, Laura of The Spiced Life.

• Easter Candy Cookies from Food Lust People Love
• Easter Peanut Butter Blossoms from The Spice Life
• M&Ms and Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars from Karen's Kitchen Stories

You can use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

Pin these Easter Candy Cookies! 

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Kakor Chokladflarn or IKEA Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

Kakor Chokladflarn or IKEA chocolate oatmeal cookies are a special treat we usually buy at that famous Swedish superstore but they are really quite easy to make at home. The bonus, of course, is that you know exactly what is in these. (Read: no palm oil or odd additives.) These delectable delights are crispy thin oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate sandwiched between them. In my copycat version, I leave them single file. You get more dark chocolate with each bite that way. Which, in my humble opinion, is always a good thing.

When today’s Creative Cookie Exchange theme was announced as “copycat cookies” I asked friends and family which cookies they might like to eat if I recreated a store-bought favorite. Most people were very helpful.

My husband suggested his favorite McVitie’s Ginger Nuts while at the same time allowing that he doubted any remake could duplicate the original successfully.

Wow, man.

Ordinarily that would make me say, “Challenged Accepted!” but he is really, really picky about his gingersnaps. Only McVitie’s will do.

I was all set to bake homemade Hobnobs when it suddenly struck me. There is one cookie I love to the point that I hate to buy them because I will eat them all. And they come in a very big box! You’ll have guessed from the title of this post that I’m referring to Kakor Chokladflarn from IKEA. (Recently renamed Kakor Havreflarn, which is not nearly as magical a name.)

When I tried to translate Kakor Chokladflarn into English, Google Translate struggled. Kakor was easy: Cookies. Chokladflarn became Chocolate Flap. Clearly choklad must be chocolate so I separated that second word in two. My persistence was rewarded by the following translation: Cookies Chocolate Flake. According to the French IKEA site, the flakes in the cookie title – flarn -  refer to oat flakes, in other words, whole rolled oats.

Kakor Chokladflarn or IKEA Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

My jumping off point for these cookies were these two recipes on Not Quite Nigella and Cuisine de Fadila and a couple in Swedish that were most amusing once translated. As well as a few ingredient changes, I also simplified the method and was super pleased with the results.

This recipe makes 2 dozen+ (about 27) single cookies or 13+ sandwich cookies.

Ingredients
1/2 cup or 113g butter
1 1/2 cups or 125g wholegrain rolled oats
2/3 cup or 150g caster or superfine sugar
1/4 cup or 25g ground almonds
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
7oz or 200g dark chocolate (I used a French dark chocolate called noir corsé or full-bodied black)

Method
Preheat oven to 400°F or 200°C and line two baking pans with baking parchment or silicone liners.

Measure the rolled oats, ground almond, flour, cornstarch, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into a large mixing bowl.

Melt the butter in a saucepan or microwaveable vessel. I used a measuring pitcher. Pour the melted butter into the dry ingredients. Stir well to combine.

In another small bowl, whisk the egg and vanilla paste together. Stir them into mixture in the bowl until well combined.

Use a small scoop to portion the dough out onto the prepared baking pans. Leave at least an inch around them to allow room for spreading as the cookies bake. My cookie scoop holds 2 tablespoons so I filled it about half full.

Bake for 6-7 minutes or until golden. Keep an eye on them because when they start to brown, they turn golden on the edges very quickly.

Leave the cookies to cool on the parchment or silicone liner until they are set. then use a thin spatula to transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely. If you try to move them too soon, they might break.

Heat the chocolate in a microwave in 10-15 second bursts, stirring well in between, until it is smooth and completely melted. (You can also use a double boiler.)

Use a pastry brush or a palette knife to add the chocolate to the bottoms of the cookies.

If you are leaving them single, as I did, place them chocolate side up on parchment or silicone liners until the chocolate sets. Or sandwich them together, chocolate side to chocolate side, if you want to make authentic kakor chokladflarn or IKEA Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies. They are fabulous with a cold glass of milk, coffee or tea.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month's Creative Cookie Exchange host, Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories. We are a small group this month. Just three tasty cookies. Check 'em out!

• Homemade Circus Animal Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Honey Jumbles from All That's Left Are the Crumbs
• Kakor Chokladflarn - IKEA Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies from Food Lust People Love

You can use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

Pin these Kakor Chokladflarn aka IKEA Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies! 

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Chocolate Chip Orange Oatmeal Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

These chocolate chip orange oatmeal cookies are my favorite chocolate chip cookies, bumped up a few notches with the simple but effect addition of fresh orange zest.

When the Creative Cookie Exchange group first started baking together several years ago, the first theme was “back to school” cookies. I didn’t even hesitate because there was only one cookie recipe that I made over and over and over again when my girls were still living at home.

Originally shared with me by a good friend almost 30 years ago, those Joy of Cooking chocolate chip oatmeal cookies were my go-to for after school snack time, weekends, sleepovers and anytime chewy cookies were needed. (Pretty much always.)

Just a few weeks ago, a reader named Cindy C. left a comment on that post telling me that the Joy of Cooking recipe was her family’s favorite as well. She said it was because they always added the suggested optional orange zest; that’s what made the cookies special. Well. That gave me pause. I had never added the orange zest. I responded that I certainly would next time.

So here we are. Creative Cookie Exchange doyenne Laura from The Spiced Life is hosting today’s event with a theme of “favorite cookies” or for those of us who have already shared our favorite, add a twist. I've added the orange zest.

Chocolate Chip Orange Oatmeal Cookies

A classic from Joy of Cooking, this oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe makes the best chewy cookies around, with an added flavor hit of orange. I'm not sure if they are better than the original but they are certainly delicious. The orange zest and semi-sweet chocolate make a great combination.

Ingredients
1/2 cup (firmly packed) or 100g brown sugar
1/2 cup or 115g caster sugar
1/2 cup or 115g butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup or 125g all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1/2 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 95g uncooked quick rolled oats
3/4 cup or 125g semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease a cookie sheet or line it with a silicone mat. Cream your butter with the two sugars. Add in the egg, vanilla and milk. Beat till smooth.

Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and beat again until smooth.

Add in the oats, chocolate chips and orange zest. Beat until well mixed.

Drop spoonfuls 2 inches apart on well-greased cookie sheet. I like to use my 2-tablespoon cookie scoop so every cookie is even.

The little flecks of orange aren't as obvious in the baked cookies. 

Bake 8-10 minutes, or until light brown. For chewy cookies, do not over bake!

Leave to cool for a few minutes on the baking pan then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely before storing in an airtight container. 

This batch will make about 2 1/2 - 3 dozen two-inch cookies though I highly recommend making a double batch of dough and freezing the balance. Find complete instructions for freezing then baking here.

Enjoy!

Check out all the favorite cookies we are sharing today! Many thanks to our host Laura from The Spice Life.

• Game Day Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Gosh Darn Good Cookies from What Smells So Good?
• The Chocolate Chip Cookie Collection from The Spiced Life
• Chocolate Chip Orange Oatmeal Cookies from Food Lust People Love

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

Pin these Chocolate Chip Orange Oatmeal Cookies! 

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Cinnamon Chocolate Shortbread #CreativeCookieExchange

Cinnamon Chocolate Shortbread is the perfect cookie for your holiday table or cookie exchange. The rich buttery shortbread is enhanced by cinnamon and cocoa for a delightful treat that keeps well in a tin for days.

Six years ago, when I first moved to Dubai, I was invited to a cookie exchange. The hostess was a friend of a friend who lived on Palm Jumeirah so I was most excited to go. If you’ve ever looked up Dubai, you have no doubt seen photos of the Palm. In an aerial view, it looks like a great big palm tree, with multiple fronds arcing gracefully out in the Arabian Gulf. Each frond is a gated community of homes so without an invitation, the best one can do is to drive up the “trunk” to the hotel at the top of the palm tree.

The house was beautifully decorated for Christmas and because the weather at this time of year is lovely, we were able to sit outside overlooking the sea. Gorgeous! But the very best part was getting to meet some wonderful ladies and munch on cookies together.

This month my Creative Cookie Exchange group is sharing cookies that last well in a tin, which I translate to mean, would also be perfect for gifting to neighbors and friends or bringing to a cookie exchange. These cinnamon chocolate shortbread cookies fit the bill.

Cinnamon Chocolate Shortbread

This recipe is adapted from two I found on the internet, from the BBC Good Food site and Country Living. I topped mine with amber sugar crystals for a more festive look plus added sweetness and crunch. You can find them on Amazon if your local shops don't carry them. <affiliate link

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 170g butter, softened
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 2/3 cups or 200g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 oz or 100g good quality dark chocolate, cut into small chunks (I used Lindt.)

Optional for decoration:
2-3 tablespoons amber sugar crystals (26-42g)

Method
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together with electric beaters or, if you are feeling energetic, use a wooden spoon.

Sift in the flour, cocoa, cinnamon and salt.

Mix well until you have a thick dough. Add in the chocolate bits and mix again.

Roll the dough into log about 2 inches or 5cm thick. Wrap the log in cling film and chill for at least 1 hour or for several days. This dough can also be frozen for up to 1 month.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line two baking sheets with baking parchment or silicone mats.

Slice the log into 1/2 in or 1cm-thick rounds.

Transfer the cookies to your prepared baking pans.

Top with amber sugar crystals, if desired. Press them in gently to stop them falling off and then bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven.

Cool on the pan completely before transferring the shortbread cookies to a serving plate or a cookie tin.

Enjoy!

Check out all of the lovely cookies that last in a tin! Many thanks to Holly of A Baker's House for hosting the group this month.

• Almond Flour Sugar Cookies from A Baker's House
• Carrot Cake Biscotti from What Smells so Good?
• Cinnamon Chocolate Shortbread from Food Lust People Love
• Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Oatmeal Lace Cookies from The Spiced Life

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

Pin this Cinnamon Chocolate Shortbread!

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