SNOWBALLS, AMISH NUT BALLS

The closer it gets to Christmas, the more opportunities we have to eat calorie rich food, aka awesome sweets. We finished the Date Bars and there was nothing else in the house sweet to eat. I don't know if you saw the post for the Date Bars, but they were the best. It took us a few days to eat all of them so the last few were a little dry. All I did was put one on a napkin and heat in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds on HIGH and it tasted like I had just taken it out of the oven. I definitely need to make them again and soon.

Well, I love this recipe I found in my DIL Sara's cookbook called The Amish Baking Cookbook, Plainly Delicious Recipes Oven to Table by Georgia Varozza and Kathleen Kerr. They called it Amish Nut Balls, but I have seen similar recipes in several of my Amish cookbooks and they called them Snowballs. They are also known by many other names.

What I really love about this recipe is it made exactly 23 cookies. They are so good and literally just melt in your mouth. It is really hard to eat just one. (You could always double the recipe if you wanted more.)

AMISH NUT BALLS

2/3       cup butter, room temperature
1          cup ground nuts (I used pecans.)
1          cup flour
3          tablespoons sugar
1          teaspoon vanilla
1/8       teaspoon salt
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine all ingredients except the powdered sugar in a large mixing bowl.

Work with fingers until well blended.

(I didn't have a lot of time and I took the easy out and used my mixer.)

Shape balls the size of large marbles.

(I used my cookie scoop that holds 1 tablespoon water. Works great.)

Place balls on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10 minutes. 

While still warm, roll in powdered sugar.

(Since I have never made these before, I wasn't sure how soon I should roll the cookies in the sugar. They were a little soft on the cookie sheet, so I took them off the sheet and placed them on a wire rack. After a few minutes, I rolled them in the sugar and placed them on the wire rack to finish cooling. The second pan I removed the cookies to the rack and let them cool longer before I rolled them in the sugar. This way the powdered sugar coated the cookies better. I ended up rolling them all again the second time.) 

I would recommend that you place a piece of wax paper under the rack because this is really messy.