To balance all of the spicy Mexican food I made this week (Fire Roasted Salsa & Chicken and Lime Soup), I needed something sweet. I did a quick google search for “Mexican desserts” and found this little gem of a cookie.
I actually remember having these cookies when I was a child but was always under the impression that they were an Italian cookie… probably because we decided the name was fun to say in an over exaggerated Italian accent while running around the house with our mouths stuffed full of cookies. I think we did that for a straight. My poor mother.
I digress.
These yummy little crumbly cakes are somewhat similar to pie crust but a little cakier and a little crumblier. They are pretty much balls of butter, flour and sugar flavored with a little bit of cinnamon and vanilla. They crumble when you bite into them then melt on your tongue. What more could you want?
I worked off of this recipe that I found on Allrecipes.com. I needed to add quite a bit more flour to achieve a dough that could be shaped into balls. So, I would suggest starting with 1.5 cups and add 1/4 cup more at a time until the dough is dry enough for you to handle without them melting butter all over you and greasing up your hands.
Polvorones
Polvorones
Servings 24 cookiesIngredients
- 1 cup 2 sticks butter ($1.41)
- 1 cup powdered sugar, divided ($0.18)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract ($0.30)
- 2 cups flour ($0.17)
- 2 tsp cinnamon, divided ($0.10)
- 1/4 tsp salt ($0.05)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Let the butter come to room temperature. Combine 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar with the butter. Whip the butter and sugar together until they are well incorporated and have a “creamed” texture (see photos below). You can use a mixer or a good ‘ol fork and some elbow grease. Then stir in the vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, combine the 1.5 cups of flour with 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of salt. Mix them until the are evenly combined.
- Stir the flour mixture into the creamed butter and sugar mixture. If the mix is still too sticky to form into balls with your hands, add more flour, 1/4 cup at a time. I added somewhere between 1/2 to 3/4 cup more after the initial 1.5 cups.
- Shape the dough into 24 evenly sized balls (think ping pong balls). Combine the remaining 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon in a bowl and roll each ball in the sugar mixture to coat.
- Place the sugar coated dough balls on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees or until they are a light golden brown in color. Let the cookies cool before eating for optimum crumbly texture!
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Nutrition
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Step By Step Photos
Combine the room temperature butter and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar in a bowl.
Whip them up as best you can with a fork or use a mixer. This is super hard to do with cold butter so let it warm up.
In a separate bowl, combine 1.5 cups of flour, 1/4 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of cinnamon. Stir until they are well combined.
Mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture. The result should be a stiff dough. If it is still really soft and too sticky to pick up and make a ball out of, add more flour 1/4 cup at a time until you are able to work with it using your hands. If the butter was really warm to begin with, you can put the bowl in the refrigerator to stiffen it up a bit.
Roll the dough into 24 ping pong sized balls. Mix together 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon and roll the balls in it to coat.
Place the sugar coated balls *cough* on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until they are golden brown.
When they are finished they will be a light golden brown color and the sugar coating will look a little crackled like this. Let them cool before eating!
Have you tried using powdered sugar sugar free substitute? Was wondering if it turned out okay
We haven’t tried that, unfortunately!
These are delicious! I halved the recipe since I had only thawed 1 stick of butter from the freezer. Also, added crumbled walnuts. Next time I’ll make an entire recipe since half recipe will disappear quick. Thanks Beth.
I make these for Christmas every year, very good.
These are very delicious
I made those tonight for a Mexican themed party… they are all gone! They are super easy to make. I rolled them into more powdered sugar and cinnamon once they came out of the oven. It was amazing! Thank you for the recipe.
Wahoo!! Glad to hear it Julie! Our invite must have been lost in the mail ;)
im glad you enjoyed karen!
great recipe
These came out great, added tsp of bakin powder though.
They are so crumbly and delicious!!!!😋
We call these Wedding Tea Cakes or Snowball cookies. They are made by some Amerindians from the American SW, although all the ones I have had would have ground nuts in them too (usually walnuts, at least that’s what my mother would use).
Mine flattened and weren’t the pretty little balls in the photos! What would could be the issue?
Sounds like maybe there wasn’t quite enough flour?
Can you substitute butter with margarine in this recipe?
I haven’t tried it, but I think real butter will probably give you a much better flavor.
I totally messed up with mine. The didnt hold their shape. They flattened out like a regular cookie in the oven. I haven’t tastes them yet. They were very powedery when I shaped them into balls though. I’ll have to try this again sometime.
This happened to me also!
As someone with no money for Christmas presents this year, I felt great pride in making these for my loved ones, you made it so I could give them something! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this easy to learn recipe. I had everything on hand to make these cookies already.
To make them more festive, I dusted them with a little powdered sugar for a snowy effect, and in the center sprinkled a tiny bit of red/green sprinkles. They look so beautiful and taste wonderful.
I like this. Very good and easy to make!
I made this about a year ago and it was SO YUMMY! I have totally forgotten about it, but I love love love cinnamon, and the texture was great. So delicious to eat them warm and fresh! I remember it being a lot of work, but I recently have been making my own tortillas so I’m sure this is super simple if I tried it again ;)
These were delightful and a little too easy to eat. I served it as dessert at a Mexican-themed dinner, plus your Aztec Cocoa. Really nice complement!
P.S. My cookies also melted a little, I think because I needed to let the butter stiffen a little.
I only added a 1 1/2 cups of flour, thinking it would be enough…my cookies melted into a more disc-like shape in the oven and the texture didn’t seem very cakey or pie-crusty to me. However they were incredibly delicious and I will just try adding a bit more flour next time; thank you Beth!
I didn’t know mexicans and filipinos had these as their traditional cuisine! They are of Spanish origin and in Spain they’re only eaten at Christmas. I guess they were brought to those countries by the Spanish conquistadors? How they’re done was a mystery to me until I found this recipe. :) Thank you!
I’ve made these a couple times for our Library Bake Sales and they are a big hit! Super easy to throw together and wonderfully crumbly and delicious! Thanks!
I love that recipe! I`m going to do this soon :)
The Philippine polvoron is different from these cookies. Filipino polvoron is not baked. It is actually a mixture of toasted flour and powdered whole milk bound with butter and formed with special mold that looks like tiny falafel maker. Yes they started doing variations of it with flavoring such as toasted rice crispies, purple yam and ground toasted peanuts, etc. Both of them are delicious but not interchangeable in spite of the common name.
Yes, this is a Filipino dessert. Great recipe btw! The Mexican version of “Mexican Wedding Cookies” are called Bizcochos, and the authentic version uses lard and not butter.
I’ve always known this as a Filipino dessert, actually, and it also is one of my favorites.
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-make-polvoron
A lot of Filipinos add things like crushed nuts, toasted rice, or crumbled chocolate cookies. I’ve never had one with cinnamon.
Yum! These were one of the first cookies I made on my own as a young one. The Joy of Cooking recipe for Mexican Wedding Cookies is similar, but has more flour in it than your original recipe here. And I can’t remember if there’s cinnamon in them or not. I do know that I eventually started adding ginger and nutmeg.