Vegan Pecan Snowball Cookies

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Melt in your mouth, beautifully round, buttery, studded with pecan bits, and dusted with powdered sugar, these vegan pecan snowball cookies are made with plant butter for a rich and tasty cookie you can enjoy for special holidays or any time of the year.

Snowball cookies are little bite-sized balls of buttery joy! Rolled in powdered sugar (little snowballs!), they are sweet, buttery, and fall apart in your mouth. Snowball cookies are naturally egg-free so it was an easy switch to make them into vegan cookies by using plant butter and organic powdered sugar.

A snowball cookie by any other name

We always called them pecan “snowball” cookies. I think that living in the desert where it rarely snows, it just seemed a more whimsical name. Snowball cookies are also known as:

• Mexican wedding cookies
• Italian wedding cookies, or
• pecan sandies

Do you call them something else in your family? I’d love to hear about it!

Pecan snowball cookies make an excellent holiday cookie! But they can be enjoyed at any time of year and for any occasion.

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Ingredients needed to make vegan pecan snowballs

• vegan butter sticks
•  powdered sugar
• all-purpose flour
• pecans, chopped fine
• vanilla extract
• salt

Use the best-tasting highest fat vegan butter that you can find. Just like cooking with wine, if you cook with cheap crap-tasting wine, your recipe will turn out cheap, crap-tasting. Higher-fat stick butter works better than tub butter for this recipe.

How to make vegan pecan snowball cookies

Step 1: Prep

Preheat the oven and prepare the baking sheet. I like to line mine with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

Soften the vegan butter to room temperature and chop the pecans. I like to chop my nuts with this handy little chopper. It’s super easy to use. Add the pecans, pull the string a few times and you’ve got chopped nuts! Again, they need to be pretty finely chopped for this recipe – no pecans halves or super large chunks.

Step 2: Cream the butter and sugar

Once the butter has softened to room temperature, mix it at high speed with a hand or stand mixer along with the powdered sugar till it’s light, creamy, and fluffy. You will want to make sure the butter and sugar are thoroughly mixed with no little chunks of butter remaining before adding in the other ingredients.

Step 3: Add in the vanilla, flour, and salt

Next, add the vanilla, flour, and salt. Continue beating till well combined BUT not a minute past that point! You don’t want to overbeat the cookie dough or you won’t have the tender, crumble-in-your-mouth, crave-able, snowball cookies you want!

STEP 4: Fold in the pecans

Now, aren’t you happy that you already chopped those pecans and set them aside? It’s nice to be able to just pull them out and fold them in.

Can you buy chopped pecans to use? Yes, you can…with a few caveats.

I’ve purchased chopped pecans that are pretty large and chunky. They do sell them as “finely chopped” and they are sometimes available. Finely chopped pecans are more expensive than pecan halves. Watch the expiration date as pecans tend to lose their freshness quickly. I have a theory (unproven) that nuts start to lose their freshness when chopped. This is why I prefer to just chop my own.

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Step 5: Roll the balls and Bake

Using your hands or small ice cream or cookie scoop, shape the dough into small balls and place them on the parchment-lined cookie sheet you’ve prepared.

They will not spread during baking so you can fit all of the cookies on a large cookie sheet. If you are using a smaller cookie sheet then you will need to cook in two batches.

Bake in a 350° oven for about 11 minutes. They will be lightly browned when finished.

Step 6: Roll in powdered sugar

While the cookies are easy to handle, but still a little warm, carefully roll in powdered sugar and set them on a cooling rack to completely cool.

After they have cooled then one-by-one roll the snowball cookies in powdered sugar a second time.

Serving and storing

These powdered sugar cookies can be saved for four days if tightly covered. You can also freeze them. I have frozen mine for a couple of months, taken them out to thaw on the counter, and enjoyed. Perhaps they can be frozen for a longer amount of time. We are not a patient family with our cookies!

For some other delicious vegan cookies and treats from Veggie Fun Kitchen for the holidays and beyond, try

• Cranberry Bliss Bars
• The Fudgiest Fudge Brownies
• Frosted Cake Brownies
• Devil’s Food Cake
• The Best Vegan Eggnog
• Creamy Chocolate Peppermint Martini

The printable recipe card for Vegan Pecan Snowball Cookies

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