Growing up, we’d spend a week or two before Christmas baking a treat each day.  The favorite among we kids were the snowball cookies.  Eventually, we only made our favorite treats. (Either that, or my mom had way too many kiddos to think about, I reminded her of this and she’s already forgotten…I better start recording all these memories and traditions before I forget them as well!)  So what better advent activity with the kiddos and my visiting sisters, than baking our beloved snowball cookies! 

Because so many of our family have food allergies/issues, my mom doesn’t even bake any more.  The original recipe comes from her Betty Crocker Cookbook.  And I won’t feed my lil’ family most of the ingredients, so I’ve altered the recipe and came up with two versions:

Healthier Snowball cookies:

1 c organic butter
1/2 c organic/natural powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 c whole wheat flour
3/4 c finely chopped nuts (we used pecan gems)
1/4 tsp salt
powdered sugar

Mix butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add flour and nuts. Continue mixing until a dough forms. Roll into small 1 inch balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Cook at 400 for 10 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar while still warm. (Betty says to roll again after they have cooled, but i think one roll is quite enough sugar). 🙂

Gluten-Free Snowball cookies:

Using my snowman recipe(except I used some organic sugar because my turbinado is too hard to melt and stick to the flour), I rolled the dough into balls, same size as above.  Cook on a greased cookie sheet for 14 minutes at 350 degrees.   Roll in powdered sugar while warm.