Snowballs ring

Vanillekipferls have walnuts and vanilla extract in the dough.

Christmastime means snowballs. Those powdery dumplings that crumble when you bite into them and leave powdered sugar stuck to your fingers signal that it’s December and something sweet is on its way. I like cookies for the powdered sugar coating because it looks like snow and they go great with hot chocolate.

Other names for snowballs include wedding cookies and tea cakes. I’ve tried different versions in the last three years, alternating the nuts used in the dough and one year adding dried cherries or cranberries to the dough. A snowball is basically a butter cookie that’s baked and rolled in powdered sugar. This year I made the vanillekipferls, a recipe from Saveur magazine’s December issue. I learned a few things after making them.

The dough, like most snowball recipes, has butter, sugar and flour as the base. This cookie has powdered sugar in the dough, with vanilla extract and crumbled walnuts.

The dough came together quick. Rolling and forming the dough into crescents, though, took some time. The dough crumbled on the ends as I started rolling it into a log with my hands.

Use one or two teaspoons flour when rolling out the dough to keep it moist.

 I also tried a rolling pin, but the width of the dough made it difficult to form a cylinder. I did the best I could with my hands. I cut each of four dough logs into quarter-to half-inch pieces. Then came time to form each piece into a crescent. I followed the technique used to crimp the edges of a pie crust. I placed my index and middle finger toward the top of the piece and my thumb on the bottom. Then I used a finger from the other hand to make an indentation into the dough to form a moon.

My mom told me of a tip she read in a Martha Stewart magazine to wait until the cookies cool before rolling them in powdered sugar to keep them from becoming gummy. I followed the advice.

These snowballs crumble quite a bit. I’m not sure if I overworked the dough and/or added too much flour when rolling out the dough.

My favorites are a pine nut wedding cookie recipe printed in Fine Cooking, and kourabiedes, a Greek version from the Food Network Kitchens. I like a buttery, moist, slighly crumbly snowball.

But no matter the recipe, once that powdered sugar sticks to my fingers, I know Christmas is near. Merry Christmas!