Coconut Snowballs
Welcome to Cookie Week! I’m not even sure how many recipes we’re sending out into the world this week… five? six? Photographing cookies is way more fun than shooting pasta or salad. Especially at this time of year when we can go throw out our usual reservations about the overly cute and just go to town. Brace yourself, it’s going to be a very cute week around here.
Okay, back to cookies. I love these Coconut Snowballs, they’re appealing to kids and adults with their lemon-y icing, their crisp outer layer and buttery insides… and they’re so cute! They really are. They look really pretty packed into a little box as a gift or stacked, pyramid-style on a cake stand at a holiday party. Unlike some Christmas cookies that have a lot of back and forth with chilling, cutting, chilling again, baking – these come together really quickly. Which make them a good one to do with kids. In the case of the batch you’re looking at, thank God I had a kid helping me. Esme was with me and Maya in the studio on this day and watched me for a minute as I dipped raw cookie dough in icing and begin to roll it in coconut before piping up. “I think when we made them at home we baked them first.” Doh! Why, yes we did. If you make this mistake, you may think to yourself, “Oh, I’ll just bake them that way and see what happens. It’s probably fine.” It’s not. You get burnt coconut and raw cookies. However, if you don’t make a sleep deprived blunder like that, these cookies are easy peasy to make.
Let us know what you’re baking this holiday. We love hearing from you!
photos by Maya Visnyei
Ingredients
- makes 2 dozen
- 2 ½ cups flour
- ¾ cups sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 Tbsp cream cheese, softened
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 4 or 5 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 Tbsp cream cheese, softened
- 1 ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
- 1 ½ cup sweetened shredded coconut
Method
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Mix together flour, sugar, salt together in a bowl.
With an electric mixer add softened butter about ¼ cup at a time until it combines with the dry ingredients.
You’ll have a pebbly mixture.
Add 2 Tbsp of softened cream cheese and vanilla.
Use your hands to bring the mixture together into a dough. Knead for a minute or two.
Use a Tablespoon to scoop the dough, then roll it between your hands to make balls.
Place on the lined sheets at least an inch apart.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.
Watch them carefully, you want them to firm up and turn very light gold. Any longer and they’ll be hard!
Take them out and allow them to cool completely on a rack.
Line two cookie sheets with parchment
While they cool, mix up 3 Tbs of lemon juice with 1 Tbsp of cream cheese.
Slowly add 1 ½ cups of confectioner’s sugar until you have a thick icing. Now add as much lemon juice as you need to thin it out to a glaze
Spread your coconut in a layer on a plate.
Take each cookie and swirl it into the glaze so all of the top gets covered (let excess drip off) then press it in the coconut to cover. Allow to set.
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We're Ceri and Laura, a couple of magazine-editors-turned-food-bloggers. Also, we're mothers obsessed with delicious, healthy, family food. We're constantly thinking of ways to make your time (and our own!) in the kitchen easier and more productive, but still nostalgic for the days when dinner was cereal eaten over the kitchen sink.
6 Comments
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! « walterjameswilde
December 21, 13:40[…] James loves to cook and secretly wishes to have a food blog] Best new recipes for the Holidays: Coconut snowballs from Sweet Potato Chronicles Gingerbread snowflakes from Martha Stewart Banana Foster Upside down […]
What I am loving « jbs
December 23, 07:50[…] you really need to. It is a great site filled with great and fun recipes. This week I made these Coconut Snowballs with my niece. We had fun getting messy in the process. These cookies could be my new favourite […]
Ceri Marsh
December 23, 08:48Thanks Jess! I hope you and Lil K had an awesome time making and eating these!
snowball cookies « movita beaucoup
February 02, 07:41[…] Snowball Cookies – click here for the recipe from Sweet Potato Chronicles […]
Jay
February 03, 18:43Sounds yummy!
dikla
August 14, 01:46can’t stop eating them!:)