Recipe – Keto Mexican Wedding Cookies / Hojarascas
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 12-16 minutes
Total Time 46 minutes
Servings 36 cookies, roughly 2 ½” in diameter
Ingredients
12 TB butter (soft, but not melted – 30 min at room temp)
2/3 cup granulated sugar substitute (ex: monk fruit)
3 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 pinches salt (if using unsalted butter; if you don’t have a “pinch” measuring spoon, 2 pinches = approx 1/8 tsp)
5 cups almond flour
Coating:
¾ cup powdered sugar substitute
or
½ cup of granulated sugar substitute and
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
Instructions
*Line 3 cookies sheets (that will fit into your refrigerator) with parchment paper. (one dozen cookies per sheet)
*Use a mixer (paddle attachment if you have one) to blend the butter and sugar substitute until it’s creamy and light in color (not more than 5 minutes).
*Beat in the cinnamon, then salt (if using unsalted butter).
*Beat in the pure vanilla extract.
*Beat in the almond flour, a 1/2 cup at a time. The dough will thicken and get clumpy, but it should stick together when pressed.
*Using an ice cream scooper, measuring spoon, standard spoon or your hands, scoop balls (roughly 1 TB) of the dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Using your palm or the bottom of a glass, flatten each ball to about 1/3 inch thick. (Their size won’t change much during baking, so form them the way you want them to come out of the oven.)
*Place the cookie sheets with the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. (This helps prevent the dough from spreading.)
*Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
*Prepare the coating. In a small bowl (diameter just a bit wider than one of your cookies), pour the sugar and cinnamon and stir to combine or pour the powdered sugar by itself.
*Bake for approximately 12 minutes for a single sheet or 16 minutes for all three sheets, until the edges start to brown a bit.
*Allow to cool at least 20 to 30 minutes so the cookies won’t fall apart.
*Using a spoon or small spatula, lift a cookie from the sheet and set in the coating bowl. Spoon the coating over the top. Flip the cookie over to spoon the coating across the bottom. Lift at an angle to allow the extra coating to fall back into the bowl and transfer to your serving platter or back to the cookie sheet.
*Allow the cookies to cool completely.
Notes
*Sugar substitute: If you use one that contains xylitol, do not serve these cookies around dogs. Xylitol – whether raw or cooked – is lethal to all canines. These cookies crumble easily, and you wouldn’t want your beloved pup or a friend’s fur baby to perish from licking up crumbs. (Our dog-lovin’ household is xylitol-free in order to prevent this.)
*Almond flour: Almond flour is supposed to be stored in the refrigerator, so you’ll need to bring it to room temperature. Almond flour does not get measured the way you would all purpose flour, digging your scoop into the flour, packing it in, and leveling it off. Either dig lightly, keeping the flour loose, and then shake off the excess, or spoon the flour into your measuring cup and level off with a knife.
*Shape: If you have the skills to form flat bottoms with rounded tops (like a golf ball cut in half), go for it. That’s how many bakeries make them here. You will, however, need to leave the cookie sheets in the middle of the oven, away from the heat source so you won’t burn the top or bottom. This is why I choose the easy method of flattening.
*Coating: We’ve seen Mexican wedding cookies in grocery stores here covered in either the sugar/cinnamon combo or powdered sugar. Online, many recipes use the powdered sugar. We took a quick poll of my husband’s family, and all remember growing up with only the sugar/cinnamon combo on their hojarascas. If being “traditional” is important to you, sugar/cinnamon would be the Tex-Mex tradition. We like both options, so I’ll coat half the batch in each one.
Coating the cookies one at a time is a bit more labor intensive than putting several into a baggie, but the bowl method will net you fewer broken cookies.
*Non-Keto: If you want to try a non-Keto recipe, it’s not as simple as a quick substitution of flour. Here’s a really great non-Keto recipe if you need one.
*Storage: Store for up to 1 week in a sealed container at room temperature. They can also be frozen, allowing 15 minutes to come to room temperature when ready to serve.
*Time management: You might be wondering why this productivity and time management blog has a number of recipes for food and beverages. For starters, life is too short not to enjoy it, so I like to share some of life’s little treats with you. It’s more profitable and less stressful to streamline your days, but if you don’t enjoy the benefits of creating more time for yourself, you’ll actually lower your productivity in the long run. Secondly, you might not have time to find “the right” recipe, so here you go!
Buen provecho!