Almond Snowball Cookies

          Snowball Cookies, also known as Russian Tea Cakes or Italian Wedding Cookies, these have been on my do list for a long time, somehow I bake more breads and cakes than cookies, so it got missed out every time and I have always thought it to be a difficult recipe too. But when I saw how simple this Almond Snowball Cookies was, I decided to make it the same day, just in time for this Christmas. As the name suggests, these cookies have some almond meal ( almond powder, either store bought or homemade ) along with the all purpose flour/maida. This gives such a nice texture and taste to these cookies, they just melt in the mouth. The lemon zest added gives the most delicious flavor to these cookies and we just loved them..

Need To Have

• All Purpose Flour/Maida - 1/2 cup
• Almond Meal - 1/4 cup
• Powdered Sugar - 2 tablespoons and about 6 tablespoons for rolling the cookies
• Melted Butter - 4 tablespoons
• Salt - 1/8 teaspoon
• Vanilla Extract - 1/4 teaspoon
• Lemon Zest - 1/4 teaspoon, packed

Original recipe here

Method

          Take the butter, 2 tablespoons of sugar and the vanilla extract and beat it well. Grate the lemon zest and keep.

          To the butter mixture, add the maida, almond meal, salt and lemon zest and bring everything together to form a smooth dough.

          Take a teaspoon of the dough, roll it into a smooth ball and place on a baking tray ( layered with parchment or wax paper), do the same with all the dough. Bake them in a preheated oven at 200 C for 10 to 12 minutes, till the bottom turns golden and the edges start turning golden.

          Remove and let the cookies cool for 5 minutes, then remove from the baking tray, roll it in the remaining powdered sugar and place on a cooling wire rack and let it cool to room temperature. Then dust them with more powdered sugar and enjoy.

Note
The original recipe used orange zest, I didn't have an orange that day, so used lemon zest.
If you can't find almond meal, you can make it at home, peel, dry and powder the almonds.
Keep an eye on the cookies after 8 to 9 minutes.
The above quantity gives about 24 bite size cookies.