Friday, April 10, 2009

In the Kitchen with Esperanza

Esperanza here. So everyone in America likes to make the Mexican Wedding Cookies for Christmas, but in my house, my mamacita always made them for Easter.

I am making them today for the girls to take home to their families. Lauren has invited Abigail – who is finally well – to come home with her to Santa Barbara for Easter dinner on Sunday. At first she said no when Lauren asked her. Then she suddenly changed her mind. And after she said yes, she went into her library and closed the door and she is there still.

Anyway. Here they are. Don’t eat too many jelly beans this weekend.

Esperanza’s Mexican Wedding Cookies

About 2 cups of flour (you know me, I don’t measure)
¼ tsp salt
2 sticks of soft butter (don’t even say a word)
1 heaping cup of powdered sugar
Vanilla extract – maybe a little more than a teaspoon, dash of almond extract, too
1 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

Stir the flour and salt together then in another bowl mix together the butter and half the pwdered sugar until smooth. Stir in the vanilla extract and then the flour mixture until nicely blended. Then stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate the dough for about 2 hours or until it is firm enough to work with. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Shape the dough into balls that are about 1 inch in diameter. Place the balls on ungreased baking sheets with about an inch between the cookies. One sheet at a time, bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes or until set, but not brown. Put the other half of the of the powdered sugar in a shallow bowl or pie plate. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack and cool for 2 to 4 minutes. Carefully remove the cookies and roll each one in the sugar to coat. Cool the cookies completely on a wire rack.
When cool, store the cookies in an airtight container. These cookies freeze very nice. Makes about 40 cookies.

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