Cookies Dessert Holiday Favorites! Holidays

Pecan Snowball Cookies

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These melt-in-your-mouth pecan snowball cookies have an irresistible moist center like a chewy shortbread cookie. It’s the perfect Christmas cookie recipe to bake these holidays.

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I love this recipe for pecan snowball cookies. I used to find my buggy steering towards the grocery store each year for the store-bought ones. I’ve always wanted to make my own and wondered if they would be even better at home. Well, the good news is, a few years ago I FINALLY got a recipe for them from Mama! The bad news is, they taste even better than store-bought snowball cookies.

Fortunately, it takes a small list of simple ingredients to make these buttery pecan snowball cookies, like flour, sugar, vanilla extract, butter, salt, and finely chopped nuts. While I use pecans, hence the name, you can use whichever nuts you prefer. All you have to do is slowly combine the ingredients, bake the cookies, and roll them in confectioner’s sugar once cooled, so they get that snowball effect!

Trust me, the inside of these pecan snowball cookies is an absolute delight! It’s like a yummy buttery shortbread with finely chopped nuts inside.

If you’re in the market for other holiday cookies to bake this year, check out this post, which features 14 of my favorite Christmas cookie recipes. Happy baking!

Recipe Ingredients

All-purpose flour
Sugar
Vanilla extract
Butter
Finely chopped nuts of your choice (I chop mine in the food processor).
Salt

How To Make Pecan Snowball Cookies

Place your softened butter, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl and cream it until it’s git up and go done got up and went.

Like this.

Next, add your flour to the wet ingredients.

This is where the original snowball cookie recipe said to sift the flour. Pfft. Right. I have a sifter and it sits upon a pretty little shelf in my kitchen where it collects dust. I don’t sift. It is against my personal convictions.

Just dump your flour in there. Be rebellious with me.

Pour in your vanilla extract.

The recipe calls for two teaspoons but y’all know I just kinda pour and leave it up to the good Lord how much ends up in there.

It’s called divine baking – and I just made that term up. How cool is that? Stick with me, we’ll be the cool kids, even if no one knows it but us!

Oh, you’re gonna need to scrape down the sides of your bowl some but you’ll figure that out…

Dump in your finely chopped pecans.

Oh, now you need to mix it all up again until well combined.

Like this.

Go ahead and get you a pinch of that dough and taste it. Be sure to save some to bake though…I know it will be tempting.

It’s baking time!

I used my little cookie dough scoop and made some pretty generous-sized cookies. You can just make them with your hands and make little one-inch balls and have twice as many as I did.

However, I was in a lazy, cookie dough scoop kinda mood and when I’m in those moods I try not to deny myself the pleasure of indulging in the easy way out.

Now, bake ’em at 325 for 20 minutes, ensuring you don’t overbake them.

I made about 30 but you can easily make 50 or so instead.

After they cool, roll each snowball cookie in powdered sugar.

These pecan snowball cookies are absolutely, melt in your mouth, delicious.

Here is what the inside of one would look like if your teeth were actually a butter knife.

What pretty little snowballs! One bite and you’ll be making this every year from here on out!

Storage

Store your cookies in an airtight container at room temperature or in the fridge for up to 1 week.
You can also freeze either the unbaked cookie dough or the baked cookies for up to 3 months. Once you thaw the baked snowball cookies, roll them in sugar once more.

Recipe Notes

Make sure to use powdered sugar in the cookie dough and not granulated sugar, as we want the batter to be nice and smooth.
If you have time, you can toast the pecans in the oven for about 10 minutes before chopping them and adding them to the cookie dough. It really elevates the flavor!
Don’t be afraid to double-roll your snowball cookies in powdered sugar so they truly resemble snowballs!
Besides pecans, you can use walnuts, almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts, or cashews. Just ensure they’re roasted and finely chopped before adding to the cookie dough.
If you opt for almonds, you can also add 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract to the recipe to enhance the flavor. Another option is substituting the vanilla extract for lemon juice and adding 1 tablespoon of lemon zest to make almond lemon snowballs.
Speaking of almonds… substitute the all-purpose flour for almond flour to make gluten-free snowball cookies.
Here are more additions to add to your cookie dough when you fold in the pecans:
- 2/3 cup of sprinkles
- 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips to make chocolate snowballs.

Recipe FAQs

What are some other names for snowball cookies?

Snowball cookies are also called Mexican wedding cookies (which we have a recipe for right here), Russian tea cakes, snowdrop cookies, Southern Butterballs, Pecan Sandies, and Italian butter cookies. But no matter what you call them, they’re utterly delicious!