These butter pecan balls are DELICIOUS, and with only 5 ingredients, they’re easy and fast to make. You can toss them in confectioner’s sugar if you want to, so that’s an optional 6th ingredient, but you definitely don’t need to do that to enjoy the shortbread-y texture of these cookies.
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Pecan Shortbread Cookie Bites
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Preheat the oven to 300F
- Beat the butter with a mixer until it's soft.
- Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until incorporated.
- Add the ground pecans and flour and mix by hand until it's totally incorporated into a doughy ball.
- Scoop out teaspoon-sized balls of the dough using a spoon or a small ice cream scoop and put them on a lined baking sheet about an inch or two apart. These don't spread as they bake so they can be pretty close together.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- While the cookies are baking, wash the mixing bowl and put the confectioner's sugar in it.
- Remove from the pan and toss them in powdered sugar if you want to coat them. See below for tips on doing this.
- Store in a sealed container after they cool off completely.
Equipment for making the cookies.
Here’s a list on Amazon of all of the things you’ll need to make these cookies: Cookies supply list (Affiliate link)
I would suggest getting the silicone mats that I used to make these for baking cookies in general. They make getting the cookies off of the cookie sheet really easy, they’re reusable, and they’re really easy to clean: Silicone mats on Amazon (Affiliate link)
Tips for making these cookies.
- When you bake these cookies, they won’t look much different as they cook, so don’t overbake them. 30 minutes at 300 degrees F is enough.
- Make sure to grind the pecans up really well, they should be like a flour. It’s okay if there are some small pieces still in them, but they should be like a nut flour instead of chopped nuts.
- When you toss these in the confectioner’s sugar, you can wait until they cool off if you don’t want the sugar to melt at all. If you do it when they’re hot like I did, the sugar will melt a little, which is fine unless you don’t like that look. To keep them perfectly snowy white, wait until they’re totally cool before putting them in the sugar.
- If you want the cookies to have a glazed look, roll them in the sugar then put them back on the cookie sheet and into the oven for a minute or so. It will melt the sugar and when they cool off, they’ll have a glazed appearance.
- If you want the cookies to be rounder instead of flat on one side, you can roll them into balls before baking.
- These cookies have a shortbread texture…If you like crispy cookies, you might also like these: Crispy Ginger Shortbread cookies
For a recipe for crispy pecan cookies, click here.