Too Decadant Sugar Balls?

Obviously, my title is entirely rhetorical. While the Mexican Wedding Cakes I made are way intense, with a nice strong cup of coffee, they are delicioso!

So yeah, Mexican Wedding Cakes are those snowball-looking numbers that you might remember from the annual Christmastime cookie deluge. See below for a reminder.


I've always been a fan, but I've never made the suckers. I picked out this recipe, because it features one of my all-time favorite taste combos: pistachios and dried cranberries.

The process is almost ridiculously easy:

• Cream room-temperature butter, vanilla and powder sugar. (Nope, no eggs in this recipe.)
• Mix in chopped pistachios and dried cranberries.
• Stir in flour. (This part was kinda tricky by and because the dough gets mighty dense; I used my mixer on the lowest setting.)
• Scoop out heaping tablespoonfuls and bake for about 20 minutes.
  

• Then toss them in more powdered sugar, and you're done!

Words to the wise: I used half of this recipe, which claimed to make 40 cookies, but there were way less...about 25.

The cookies' butter content -- not to mention the sugar coating -- makes these suckers rich, but awesome. To deal with that, in the future, I might make ones that are a teensy bit smaller, or maybe I'll mix them up with some less rich cookies (like gingersnaps) for a good old-fashioned Christmas variety pack.

If you're feeling tough (or, say, ravenous, PMS-y or too underweight), I definitely recommend them.