It's the season to be jolly - Mexican Wedding Cakes

Christmas is around the corner and I have started making my grand plans for celebrating it. This time, I have made an ambitious plan of gifting home baked Christmas goodies to my neighbours. An ambitious plan - because I am a full time working professional (5 and 1/2 day work week), full time mother to a precocious 3 and 1/2 year old and a temporary house wife (my in-laws are holidaying for a couple of months). 

As I started making my plans, I realized that there are so many factors that you have to take into consideration. Most important is the palate preferences - egg (less), with(out) alcohol etc. Also, time is a major constraint for me. So, after a lot of net surfing, I have decided to bake two types of fruit cakes - with alcohol & eggs and without alcohol and eggs. Also, I have decided to make two types of cookies - with egg and without egg.

Mexican Wedding Cakes are simple, melt-in-your-mouth kind of cookies which is very easy to make and does not require eggs. The ingredients for making it is also easily available. I found the recipe here, in one of my favorite go-to websites for good recipes. 

Mexican Wedding Cakes

As mentioned in the website, the key to a good Mexican Wedding Cake is the quality of butter. However, due to certain constraints (like I mentioned above) I decided to go ahead with our good old Amul butter. I generally opt for low salt butter like Nutralite for baking. However, I had an additional packet of Amul butter in my fridge and I decided to go ahead with it. The preparation for the cake is a very easy process and less time consuming. 

Ingredients -

2 cups or 260 grams all purpose flour (maida)

2/3 cup or 65 grams nuts (pecans/ hazel nuts/ walnuts) (I used only walnuts)

1 cup or 227 grams of unsalted butter at room temperature (I used Amul butter)

1/4 cup or 30 grams of confectioner's sugar or icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt (I omitted this)

1 cup confectioner's sugar or icing sugar for topping

Equipments - 

1 medium sized bowl

1 hand held electric beater with whisk attachment or wire whisk

1 wooden or rubber spatula

Method - 

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degree F or 177 degree centigrade and place a rack in the centre of the oven. I use a convection oven and I pre-heated my oven to 180 degree centigrade.
2. Bring the butter to room temperature and place it in the medium sized bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces as it will help in the mixing process as well as reach room temperature. 
3. Place the nuts on a baking tray and bake for around 5 to 7 minutes, until they are lightly browned and fragrant. Take it out of the oven and let it cool completely. 
4. Powder the nuts into a fine powder. A word of caution here. The nuts would release oil and you might end up with a paste rather than powder. Hence, coat the nuts with 2 tbsp of the flour from the recipe and pulse it couple of times in the mixie / food processor. Check the mixie after couple of pulse to see if the nuts are releasing oil. You can add a couple of tsp of flour from the recipe, if you feel the nuts are releasing oil, The powder will be slightly sticky, which is ok. Keep it aside.
5. Measure the flour and keep it aside. 
6. Prepare the icing sugar. If not using a ready made icing sugar, it can be made at home by finely grinding regular granulate sugar in the mixie / food processor. Just make sure it is really fine. Measure the sugar after grinding it into a fine powder and add it to the butter.
7. With an electric beater or wire whisk, beat the butter and sugar till it is light and fluffy. It took me two minutes on slow speed. 
8. Add the vanilla extract and beat until incorporated. 
9. Add the flour and salt (if using) in batches and beat till its fully incorporated. 
10. Using a silicon or rubber spatula, scrape the sides of the bowl before each addition. 
11. Add the powdered nuts and beat until incorporated. 
12. Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, so that it becomes firm. I refrigerated mine for around 2 hours. If the dough is not firm, keep it in the freezer for an hour.
13. Pre-heat the oven once again (as mentioned above) 10 minutes prior to baking. 
14. Butter a baking tray and line it with baking sheet or parchment paper. Make sure some part of the parchment paper is outside the baking tray so that it can be used for handling.
15. Take out the cookie dough from the refrigerator and with a clean hand roll the dough into small 1 inch balls. 
16. Place the dough balls in the prepared baking tray, couple of inches apart, and bake for 10 to 15 minutes (can vary according to the type of oven) till the bottom edges of the cookies starts browning.
17. In the meanwhile, in a wide mouthed bowl place the confectioner's sugar required for rolling the cookies. 
18. Once they are baked and are still hot, carefully roll them or sprinkle confectioner's sugar on them. The cookies are very delicate and they can come apart easily. 
19. Transfer them onto a wire rack and let them cool completely. 
20. It would be handy to place a newspaper under the wire rack to keep the kitchen top clean and reduce the after baking clean -up.

A word on convection baking. In my oven, I could only bake 10 cookies at a time. Hence, once I rolled my 10 cookie balls, I re-covered the dough with the cling film and put it back into the refrigerator. As the main ingredient is butter, prolonged exposure to room temperature will cause the butter to melt and dough will not roll into balls. The baking time in my oven was 20 minutes. 

Storing the cookies. Once the cookies are completely cooled, store them in an airtight container. Line the bottom of the container with parchment paper and place cookies. Line another parchment paper on top of the cookies and place the next set of cookies. 

Before serving, roll the cookies once more in the confectioner's sugar.

The cookies tasted absolutely delicious. It was salty and sweet at the same time. A perfect accompaniment for evening tea!!!