Delicate and powdery Mexican Wedding Cookies (or Russian Tea Cakes) are made gluten-free and healthier with almond meal. They’re insanely delicious!
Mexican wedding cookies, Russian tea cakes, snowball cookies – whatever you want to call these bad boys – they’re the bomb diggity. I think they’re one of my favorite Christmas cookies! Or maybe my favorite?
But then…there’s chocolate chip. Ah, I can’t decide.
Anyway, the Mexican Wedding Cookies. These are really a tasty treat! They’re basically a really delicate, almost shortbread tasting, cookie ball covered in powdered sugar.
They tend to crumble everywhere when you take a bite…so you can just pop the whole cookie into your mouth. BUT, if you pop the cookie in your mouth, be sure not to let anyone make you laugh, or don’t cough. Powdered sugar EVERYWHERE 🙂
How do you make Mexican Wedding Cookies Gluten-Free?
That’s easy. Instead of using flour, we’re going to use a blend of almond meal and brown rice flour.
Wait wait, what’s the difference between almond meal and almond flour?
Almond meal is whole almonds ground to make a coarse meal – it kind of looks like fine couscous. Here’s how to make your own almond meal. Almond meal is great for things with crunch and texture like these cookies, or in place of breadcrumbs for chicken fingers or in meatballs.
Almond flour is blanched almonds processed down until they’re very fine – you can use it in this recipe but the cookies are more dense and dry. Almond flour is the more “flour-like” so it’s great for things like pie crust and muffins!
Now that you’ve got all of that straight, let’s get to baking!
For this recipe, all you need is one bowl and a bit of time for chilling/resting the dough. It needs about 2 hours to rest in the fridge, but you can make it the night before (or even a day or two if you cover it well) you want to bake to make things easy!
Love healthier cookies? Try my cashew chocolate chip cookie bars!
PrintGluten-Free Mexican Wedding Cookies
Delicate and powdery Mexican Wedding Cookies (or Russian Tea Cakes) are made gluten free and healthier with almond meal. They’re insanely delicious!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes + 2 hours cool time
- Cook Time: 13 minutes
- Total Time: 23 minutes + 2 hours cool time
- Yield: 1 and 1/2 dozen cookies 1x
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 3 Tbsp. melted coconut oil, butter or ghee
- 3 Tbsp. maple syrup
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 cup almond meal (not almond flour – see notes)*
- 1/2 cup brown rice flour
- 1 pinch sea salt
- about 1 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
- Begin by combining the coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla extract in a medium sized mixing bowl.
- Then, mix in the almond meal, brown rice flour and sea salt. Mix everything together until well combined and cover the bowl.
- Chill the dough in the fridge for at least two hours or overnight before baking.
- When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350F.
- Scoop out small, round dough balls (I use a small cookie scoop) and place them on a baking sheet lined wih parchment or a silpat. If you need to, roll the balls of dough with your hands to make them smooth, the dough will be a bit more crumbly than traditional cookie dough.
- Bake the cookies for about 13 minutes until just golden brown.
- While the cookies are still warm, roll each one in powdered sugar until they’re all totally covered.
- Best served with cold milk!
Notes
- Almond meal is whole almonds ground to make a coarse meal – it kind of looks like fine couscous. Almond flour is blanched almonds processed down until they’re very fine – you can use it in this recipe but the cookies are more dense and dry. Here’s how to make your own almond meal.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 113
- Sugar: 10 g
- Sodium: 9 mg
- Fat: 6 g
- Saturated Fat: 2 g
- Unsaturated Fat: 0 g
- Trans Fat: 0 g
- Carbohydrates: 14 g
- Fiber: 1 g
- Protein: 2 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg