Almond Christmas Ball Cookies

I am taking a detour from chocolate bar-based cookies although we had a great run together.  I plan on making more of the Toblerone, Rolo, and possibly Skor cookies this week to take for Christmas.  For my family's Christmas, I have been put in charge of making sugar cookies which are probably my favourite for many reasons.  We always got to help out a lot with making the sugar cookies.  We used to take turns stirring in the flour, cutting the cookies out and, of course, decorating.  I will be making those in a couple of days as it's a major project.

Tonight, I decided to go for something simpler and a bit different.  One of my favourite Christmas cookies is Almond Christmas Ball Cookies.  This is a recipe I got from my Mom.  I imagine it can be found elsewhere but I love the way my Mom makes them with a whole candied cherry and not quite as much cookie dough.  These were really easy to make (with a mixer that is!).  While making them, I tuned into XM radio's Holly channel and heard a couple of my favourite Christmas tunes including Bryan Adam's Christmastime and Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town.  Christmas Cookie making is always more fun with the right tunes!

Here's my Mom's Almond Ball cookie recipe:

ALMOND CHRISTMAS BALLS 

1 cup butter
1/4 cup icing sugar for cookie dough & 1/2 cup icing sugar for coating slightly cooled cookies
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup ground almonds (2 oz.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
18 candied cherries (red and green ones of course)

1. Cream butter with 1/4 cup icing sugar until fluffy. 
2. Add everything else except the cherries and mix well with your hands (I let Mixer Martha mix it). 
3. Take a heaping teaspoon of dough, start forming it into a ball, push in half a cherry and roll again in your hands to make a perfect ball. 
4. Bake on greased baking sheet in slow oven of 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 35 minutes. (25-30 minutes worked for me but it probably depends on the oven.)
5. While still hot, roll the balls in confectioners sugar (icing sugar). 
   

Notes from Mom: I always use a whole cherry. I found cutting them made a mess of the ball. I also skimped on the dough. I took enough to cover the cherry and that was all. I also remember that I watched them closely as I do not think they took that long to bake. I usually got more than 18 Christmas balls out of a batch. 

Notes from Trudy: This is the first recipe where I actually made the amount of cookies it said it would make.  Altogether, I made 39 cookies using my Mom's instruction of just coating the cherry with the cookie dough.  Also, my Mom was right about the time in that 35 minutes is likely too long.  I set the timer for 30 minutes and that was the perfect amount of time.  In fact, the second batch was almost a bit too dark so I set the last batch for 25 minutes.  Lastly, I would recommend waiting a good 10-15 minutes before rolling them in icing sugar.

Candied Cherries. I actually used red and green ones.

The cookie dough after Martha took care of business.

All rolled up and ready to bake.

Yummy Almond Christmas Balls ready to eat!

It's midnight and I just had a midnight cookie snack and it was super yummy.  I love these because they are a bit different and they are a good bite-sized cookie for holiday events.  Hope you enjoy!

Other cookies recipes I've blogged about:

Skor Shortbread Cookies
Rolo Cookies
Toblerone Shortbread Cookies
Ginger Sparkler Cookies