The Best Snowball Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why are my snowball cookies spreading? ›

Make sure you use confectioners' sugar (aka powdered sugar or icing sugar) in the cookie dough. Granulated sugar causes the cookies to over-spread and they'll lose their “snowball” shape.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

The only thing that I have picked up is that it MAY be helpful to roll the cookies in the powdered sugar when they are slightly warm, and then again when they are cool.

Why do my snowball cookies go flat? These snowball cookies should not flatten. If they do it's likely the dough wasn't chilled long enough and the ingredients were too warm to begin with so they spread. It's also possible you accidentally measured the ingredients incorrectly!

Which One Should I Use in Cookies? Basically, cookies made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough. However, they are more flavorful than cookies made with shortening. Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren't as flavorful.

Also, underbaking them by a minute or 2 will help them retain a dense, chewy bite, explains Jenny McCoy, pastry baking arts chef-instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York. Adding more moisture to your dough in the form of extra butter, egg yolks, or brown sugar will make your cookies even softer.

You'll end up with a grainy, unappealing texture. Lastly, store-bought powdered sugar generally includes corn starch, which prevents it from caking together. This can lead to unpredictable outcomes when you interchange the two.

Use powdered sugar instead of flour to roll your dough: if you're like me and use every bit of your dough, I recommend using powdered sugar instead of flour to roll your dough. When I use flour it adds too much flour to the dough and makes it drier.

The origin for pecan snowball cookies is unknown. Beloved in many parts of the world, these cookies may have traveled to the U.S. by way of immigrants from Eastern Europe or Mexico. Since the 20th century, they've become part of traditional American offerings for weddings and holidays, including Christmas and Easter.

How do you keep Christmas cookies from spreading? ›

1) Don't grease your baking pan — line it instead

“For the best results, choose a silicone baking mat or parchment paper to line your pan,” Dawn recommends. “Simply greasing your pan — basically adding fat to it — will encourage your cookies to spread.” (Check out our side-by-side test baking to see for yourself.)

Mixing Butter & Sugar

If it's over-mixed, the air pockets decrease in size and are unable to hold their shape in the oven—causing your cookies to spread. It's best to cream butter and sugar on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes.

Too Much Flour

This may seem counterintuitive—after all, isn't flour a key ingredient in baking? Yes, but if you add too much flour, your cookies won't spread as they bake. Too much flour causes the dough to become dry and crumbly, which prevents it from flattening out during baking.

One of the most common causes of cookie spread is that the fat is too warm. Make sure to chill your dough thoroughly if the recipe calls for it. If you're forming dough balls and the dough is too sticky to work with, this is a sign that your dough may be too warm. Try chilling the dough for at least 15 minutes!