Butter Ball Cookies (Andy Cassoni's)

Also known as Russian tea cakes, Mexican wedding cookies, or snowballs, these butter balls are one of the simplest and most satisfying cookies you can bake. Five ingredients: butter, sugar, vanilla, cake flour, and ground walnuts. No eggs, no leavening, nothing fancy.

The texture comes from the cake flour and ground walnuts working together. Cake flour has less protein than all-purpose, which means less gluten development and a more tender, crumbly cookie. The ground walnuts absorb butter fat during baking and create that signature sandy, melt-on-your-tongue quality.

Only 2 tablespoons of sugar goes into the dough. These are not sweet cookies on their own. The sweetness comes from the double coating of powdered sugar after baking. Roll them once while still warm (the sugar melts into the surface and sticks), then again after cooling (this second coat stays powdery and white).

Thirty minutes at 325°F (160°C) is a long bake for a small cookie, but the low temperature slowly dries the interior without browning the outside. You want pale, sandy cookies, not golden ones.

Chef Tips

• Grind the walnuts fine but not to a paste. Pulse in a food processor, stopping before they release their oils.
• Roll the dough into uniform 1-inch balls for even baking.
• Handle warm cookies gently. They’re fragile and crumble easily before the second sugar coat.
• Store in a single layer. Stacking knocks off the powdered sugar coating.

Variations

• Pecan version: Replace walnuts with ground pecans for a more buttery, Southern-style cookie.
• Almond crescent: Shape into crescents instead of balls and use ground almonds with a drop of almond extract.
• Chocolate center: Press a chocolate chip into the center of each ball before baking for a hidden surprise.