one - Schneebälle

...or palle di neve, polvorones or butterballs, Russian teacakes, or Mexican wedding cookies...

This first recipe is quite a classic and there are many many versions of it around the globe.
All of them are deliciously tender and crumbly, packed with butter and nuts, and coated with lots of confectioner's sugar.

At my parents' house I have mostly eaten them with hazelnuts, but for this recipe I've used walnuts, toasted in the oven and finely ground, and a combination of wholemeal spelt and regular wheat flour. Of course you could experiment with different flour/nut combinations (think buckwheat/hazelnut for example).

Recipe (makes about 45 cookies)

110 grams walnuts or other nuts
150 grams all-purpose flour
100 grams whole-wheat spelt flour
225 grams cold butter
100 grams confectioner's sugar, plus more for coating
a good pinch of salt or two and a hint of vanilla extract or seeds.


Heat your oven to 170°C and toast the walnuts in a single layer on a baking tray for about 12 minutes. Leave them to cool and grind them to a fine powder. They have to be at room temperature, otherwise they'll end up as a messy paste. If you have a kitchen processor with enough space, grind them together with the flour, that'll make it easier to do it right.

Combine the flour and ground nuts, sugar, salt and vanilla in a big bowl. Add the butter previously cut into little cubes and mix everything together in the food processor with short pulses, or rub the butter in with your fingertips. Shape the dough into a ball, flatten it a bit and put it into the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm until firm or up to a couple of days.

To bake the cookies, reheat your oven to 150°C and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Take the dough from the fridge and begin to form little balls with your hands, about 2 cm in diameter. Place them on your baking sheets. Work quickly as the cookies spread out a lot in the oven if the dough warms up too much (mine did quite a lot as you can see).

Bake 25 minutes (rotating the sheets once), until the cookies feel dry to the touch and have a golden bottom.
Leave to cool on the sheets for a few minutes, then roll them carefully in a bowl with confectioner's sugar. Cool completely on a rack and store in an airtight container.

They keep for a week or more.

Note:
I don't like industrial confectioner's sugar, or caster sugar or any sugar that is whiter than beige. So when there's a recipe that needs the white stuff, I usually make my own grinding golden cane sugar in an electric coffee grinder.