Mexican Wedding Cookies for "Global Kadai" Event

Baked these delicious cookies on the day before New year, especially for the "Global Kadai Event" at Cilantro's. For those who are not familiar with the event click here for more details. The cookies were so soft and delicate to the touch. This is the first time I have made, as well as tasted the cookies, it was absolutely melt in the mouth delicious. The taste was somewhat similar to our traditional 'Nankhattai' , but the later uses ghee instead of butter and the recipe is also slightly different.

The recipe given by Cilantro, had chocolate and cocoa, which I didnt use, because I somehow wanted my cookies to be white :).  I used slightly toasted and finely chopped almonds and cardomom to bring out the Indian flavours. Made two batches in two different shapes. I rolled one part of the dough to 1/2 inch thickness between parchment paper and the cut into crecent shapes, and for the other part simply shaped them into round balls(as per the recipe), both baked beautifully.

Here is my Indianised version of the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup softened butter
1/2 cup confectionery sugar.
1 tsp vanilla essence
13/4 cup All Purpose flour
1 cup slightly toasted and finly chopped almonds
1/2 tsp of cardomom powder.( or crush 4 pods of cardomom to a fine powder  using chapati roller)
1 pinch salt

Method.
In a Pan slightly toast the almonds for 7-8 mins and chop as finely as possible
Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until creamy until light and fluffy.
Add the vanilla essence and beat for a min
Now gradually add the flour , cardomom powder and the chopped almonds. Mix with a spatula or spoon gently.
Work with your hand and gently gather the dough and make it into a ball.

Wrap the dough in a platic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for minimum 15 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Line the baking tray with parchemnt paper or lighlty butter the tray.
Make lime sized balls and place 2 inch apart. Bake for 15 - 18 mins.
For the crecent shaped ones, I rolled the dough to 1/2 inch thickness and then cut into crecents using a lid.

Do not worry if the cookies are still soft in the center of after 18 mins. They get firm after cooled for a few minutes. Take the tray out of the oven and leave the cookies in the tray for 2 mins.

Dust with powdered sugar while its still warm and then transfer gently to storing jar

I thank Cilantro for announcing this recipe as part of the event, otherwise I definitly would not have tried these cookies. I throughly enjoyed baking this one along with my son, who helped me in cutting the crecent shaped ones.

Have you Baked your Cookies yet?...Hurry the last date for this event is January 31st and also stay tuned for the announcement of the dish for the "Global Kadai" event for the month of February hosted right here.

After I published this post , I realised from my dashboard that its my 100th post.

Feel happy... but not much proud about it as it took so long (from 2006) to get here because of my frequent long breaks and not to mention the lazy me...anyways CHEERS!!!!