Walnut Snowball Cookies

You can make these cookies with wild black walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, hickory or butternuts -- all will work fine.

INGREDIENTS
1 cup all-purpose or cake flour
1 1/2 cups walnuts, finely chopped
2-3 Tbsp sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 pound butter (at room temperature)
Pinch of salt
Powdered sugar, to coat (about 1 cup)

METHOD

1 Preheat the oven to 300°F and prepare a large cookie sheet.

2 Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, walnuts, salt, sugar) in a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract. Add the butter in little pieces, and combine everything together with your (clean!) hands until the mixture looks like a coarse meal with nut bits in it. Form the dough into small balls no larger than a walnut and place on the cookie sheet, spaced at least an inch apart from each other.

3 Bake for 35 minutes. When they are still warm, but cool enough to touch, roll the cookies in some powdered sugar. Set aside on a rack to cool completely. When cool, dust again in powdered sugar.

Yield: Makes about 20 cookies.