Cherry Almond Balls
This one is more of a feeling than a recipe— the source, Better Homes & Gardens Holiday Cooking and Entertaining Ideas (1970), probably picked up in a grocery store by my mom. To me, these cookies are childhood and magic and Christmas. My own Proust’s madeline. I still haven’t come up with something better to call them, but they’re amazing by any name.
Makes 4 dozen cookies
Ingredients
240 grams King Arthur unbleached flour, sifted
185 grams Kerrygold unsalted butter, softened*
40 grams powdered sugar, sifted
½ cup finely ground blanched almonds
1 tsp Nielsen Massey vanilla
¼ tsp salt
8 oz candied cherries, also known as glacé cherries, do not substitute
approximately 1 cup powdered sugar for rolling the cookies
Preparation
Cream the butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a mixer until well blended and slightly fluffy, about 6 minutes. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, ground almonds, and salt with a fork until evenly blended. Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl. Mix until the dough it is just evenly combined and holds together enough to shape by hand. Note: If the dough is too crumbly, you will have a terrible time making these cookies! You might have added a little too much flour, or not enough butter, but let’s not dwell on that. If you find yourself in this position, mix in just a little more softened butter until you have a dough you can work with as described below.
To assemble the cherry almond balls for baking, start by rolling about 2 teaspoons of the dough into a ball. Cupping the dough in the palm of your hand, press your thumb in the center of the ball to make a little bowl for a candied cherry. Place the cherry in the hole and close your hand around the dough to enclose the cherry in the ball. Roll the assembled cookie between your palms to make a nice round ball. Repeat 47 times. This takes a while and is best done sitting at a table listening to holiday music and drinking gin tea. Depending on how good your company is, you may be in no rush at all. But if you have other things you want to get to, you can save a fair amount of time time by production lining it and shaping a batch of dough bowls first, and then adding the cherries.
Rolling a batch of cookies using the production line method takes about 30 minutes.
Bake the cookies in a preheated 350° F oven for 20 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack and cool completely, for at least a few hours, before rolling in powdered sugar to coat generously. The cookies keep well in an air tight container for up to a week. You can also freeze or refrigerate the prepared cookies before baking to have on-demand cherry almond balls throughout the holidays.
The finished product, along with some other goodies.
*Butter that is softened too much won’t give you the light and fluffy creamed butter-sugar mixture that makes melt-in-your-mouth cookies. Likewise, butter that is beaten with sugar for too long and/or on too high a speed loses its emulsion and also won’t achieve optimal fluffiness. A half hour on the counter or maybe 40 minutes in the winter is all the time butter needs to soften. When your finger leaves an impression in the butter, it’s ready to be creamed. Keep your mixer speed a tad over medium (e.g. 6 out of 10), and cream for only about 3-6 minutes. After about 6 minutes, the butter will begin to heat up too much and start to lose its emulsion.