Munchie Monday: Pumpkin Pie Spiced Snowballs

When we have company coming I like to make 1. something I have not made before and 2. a nice sweet for dessert.  In this case the same recipe fills both categories.

Monica at The Yummy Life comes up with so many delicious-sounding recipes.  This is one of them. 

Snowball Cookies with Pumpkin Pie Spice

Cookie Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup pecans, chopped


Powdered topping
1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare a cookie sheet with either parchment paper or a Silpat mat and set aside.

In a large bowl add butter, vanilla, powdered sugar, salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice, and flour.  Mix very well.  Add chopped pecans and mix again.  The mixture might be crumbly. 

Use a small cookie scoop to make walnut-sized cookies and place on prepared cookie sheet. 

Raw cookies, i.e. ready to put into the oven

Bake 15-20 minutes until the cookies are very lightly browned, at least around the bottom.  Remove from oven then let cool on pan for 10 minutes. 

Cookies just out of the oven

In a bowl, mix the powdered topping ingredients.  Gently drop the still-warm cookies and shake to cover.  Let cool completely on a wire rack.  Dredge in the powdered topping a second time after the cookies are completely cool.

Snowballs after two times being dredged.  They need at least one more dredging.

Apparently they can be frozen for a while. I may try that when they are totally cooled.  I do not want them to be very available...

Things I did differently:  made my own pumpkin pie spice from a recipe I found online but which has since eluded me.  Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves.  As far as the butter, I put that in the microwave on the defrost mode for about 30 seconds.  The butter was then about half melted rather than just softened.  Because of this the "batter" may be less crumbly than the original recipe mentions.