Mexican Wedding Cookies
Delicious traditional Mexican Wedding Cookies -- sweet, soft and crumbly, a little shortbread-like, and filled with pecans. Vegan and Gluten-Free Recipe.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 12 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Dessert
Ingredients
Cookies:
- ½ cup pecan halves
- ¾ cup white rice flour
- ¼ cup vegan butter* (room temp.)
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp tapioca flour
- 2 tbsp maple sugar**
- less than a 1/16 tsp raw ground vanilla bean***
Coating:
- ¼ cup coconut milk powder****
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350F. Line a cookie tray with some parchment paper and set aside.
- Process pecans into a fine nut meal in a food processor. Add all remaining cookie ingredients and process to combine everything together.
- Use a small cookie scoop, or simply gather about 1 ½ tbsp of the mixture and roll into a ball. Place on the prepared cookie sheet, and repeat with remaining dough (you should get about 12 cookies), spacing them out roughly an inch apart.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes. Then remove and cool the tray on a cooling rack for about 15-20 mins.
- Place the coconut milk powder into a small bowl. Roll / dip each cookie in the bowl to coat in the coconut milk. If you'd like, you can also place some of the remaining coconut milk into a little sieve and dust the cookies some more for a more powdery look. Enjoy!
Notes
*I used organic Earth Balance. My butter was soft but not melted -- that's the ideal state for these cookies. Note that I didn't add any salt to the recipe, since EB is already salted, but if you're using an unsalted vegan butter substitute you might want to add a little pinch of salt to the cookies.
**I used maple sugar here since it's mild in color, so the end result is closer to a traditional Mexican Wedding cookie. If you don't have access to maple sugar, feel free to use a dry sweetener of your choice. Just keep in mind that sweeteners like date sugar or coconut sugar will likely darken the cookies slightly.
***Or use 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract.
****Keep an eye out on the ingredients in the coconut milk powder, as some contain dairy as an additive. I used it here as a substitute for the traditional powdered sugar used to coat these types of cookies.