INGREDIENTS

  • 2 cups of walnuts or pecans
  • 2 cups of all-purpose flour
  • 2 sticks or 16 tablespoons of unsalted butter and softened butter
  • 1/3 cup of confectioner sugar
  • ½ teaspoon of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla
  • 1 ½ cup of confectioner sugar to dust

DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Take two large baking sheets and grease or line it using parchment paper. Put the pecans in a food processor and chop it finely. If you want, you can also use a blender instead of a food processor.
  2. Remove the pecans from the food processor and process the remaining of them into a fine texture just like cornmeal. Make sure that you do not over process the pecans. If you do then you will have pecan butter which is not going to work for this recipe. If you have some of the course pieces in the mixture, you will be able to enjoy the delicious taste of the pecans as you bite into the cookies. In fact, it makes the cookies tastier. Take a large bowl and add flour, pecans, and salt. Make sure that you stir it properly to incorporate the ingredients.
  3. Take a separate mixing bowl; add butter and 1/3 cup of confectioner sugar. Use a mixer to beat it. Continue till fluffy and light. Now, mix in vanilla. Make sure that you mix it thoroughly. Now, add the pecan and flour mix that you made before. Add this mixture gradually. Beat it at low speed till you notice that it forms a coarse dough which looks like oatmeal. If you want, you can make the dough one day before. When you are ready to bake it, just bring it to room temperature for forming the cookies.

  1. Take a tablespoon of dough and roll it into a small ball. These are one inch in size. Make sure that you place each dough 1 /2 inch apart on the baking sheets. This way it will not stick to one another when it spreads. Make sure that you do overwork the dough. In case you do, the end you will have flat cookies.
  2. Bake it for 18 minutes. The cookies are going to be ready when the bottoms start to brown and the dough is firm enough. Take it out of the oven and allow it to cool for three minutes on the baking sheets. Thereafter, the transfer it to a cooling rack. Pour 1 ½ cup of confectioner sugar in a large bowl. Roll the cookies in the bowl by working 2-3 of them at a time. Shake out the excess sugar. Roll the cookies again for coating them completely.

NOTES

  • Roll out the cookies only when they are cold as it looks much prettier. If you want, you can bake them ahead and simply roll it in sugar before serving.