Almond Snowball Cookies

These Almond Snowball Cookies are one of the easiest homemade goodies I have ever made!



Instead of the usual way of beating butter and sugar with an electric beater, the cookies are made using my Bosch MaxoMixx hand blender set. Simply place flour, sugar, salt, ground almond and diced butter into the chopper set, process the mixture into fine crumb (within 10 seconds),


transfer to a mixing bowl, add in some vanilla extract and mix it into the crumbs. The mixture is on the dry side as there is no liquid added (other than the 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract), as such, you will need to gather, press and squeeze the crumbs together to form the dough. This can easily be done within a minute of two, manually by hand.

The technique to form these cookies balls is once again, to press or squeeze the dough in your palm before rolling and smoothing it into round balls. Children will have fun making these ;)

The cookies are baked at 160 degC,  a much lower temperature than the norm of 180 degC, as the doughs may crack too much if the temperature is too high.

The recipe uses a lot less butter than most cookies, yet, they still produce a nice buttery flavour :)

The texture of these cute morsels is slightly soft and crumbly, somewhere between crunchy cookies and melting moments. They are delightful treats to go with an afternoon cup of tea, and of course, they can be enjoyed any time of the day :)



Almond Snowball Cookies

Ingredients:
(makes 18 cookies)

120g cake flour
40g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
50g ground almond
50g unsalted butter, cold, diced into small cubes
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

icing sugar for dusting


Method:

• Preheat oven to 160deg C.
• Place cake flour, caster sugar, salt, ground almond followed by the diced unsalted butter in the container of the Bosch MaxoMixx XL chopper. Process using Speed 4 for 15 seconds until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.
• Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl. Add pure vanilla extract and mix with a spatula. Gather and press the mixture together with hand to form a dough.
• Divide dough into 15g portions, press, roll and smooth each portion into round balls. Place on baking tray lined with parchment paper.
• Place at middle rack of the oven and bake at 160degC for 15 to 18mins until the cookies are lightly browned.
• Leave to cool on wire rack. Dust with icing sugar and store in air-tight container.