CHOCOLATE MOCHA SNOWBALLS | Holiday Cookie Recipe!

No need to fight over these CHOCOLATE MOCHA SNOWBALLS – this lovely recipe yields enough to go around.

Frequent visitors to Weekend at the Cottage know one of our primary goals is to share recipes that taste delicious and aren’t too complicated to make. Such is the case with these chocolate butter cookies, perfect for the holidays but tasty enough to serve throughout the year.

Now, this recipe is piggybacking off of three other cookie ideas that all begin with my family’s BUTTER COOKIE RECIPE – click HERE to watch a 1-minute video on how to make this essential cookie dough. You can use it to make THUMBPRINT COOKIES, our COCONUT BUTTER COOKIE MACAROONS, and our CHERRY ORANGE OAT COOKIES too. Let’s all agree, you can never have enough cookies, especially during the holidays!
Back to this recipe, and a few tips on getting this right:

BUTTER COOKIE ROOKIE
If this is your first time making a butter cookie recipe, don’t worry; it’s perhaps one of the easiest recipes ever. Its six main ingredients are readily available. Our only suggestion, and this is IMPORTANT, is to make sure your butter is at room temperature before you begin. Creaming the soft butter with sugar at the outset is what gives the cookies their soft texture.

BOOSTER SHOT
The flavour boosters for this recipe are a trio of favourites that work perfectly together, creating a memorable finish for each and every bite. We’re talking cocoa powder, finely chopped pecans and espresso powder. The powdered coffee gives these cookies some zing, kind of like a fab cookie and a shot of espresso all in one.

If you’re a recipe tester, type here’s an invitation to play. Try the recipe with different types of nuts like walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds. I’m also thinking that adding spices to this recipe might be interesting, so what about cinnamon, cardamom and something hot like cayenne or black pepper?

PRETTY BALLSY
We had two moments during the testing of this recipe, where it was just sighs of joy. The first was when we transferred the dough out of the bowl of the stand mixer; the rich, brown colour of the dough was so pretty, we just loved the look of it.
The second was rolling the dough into little 1-inch balls. No complicated cutting for these chocolate nut cookies. Simple is certainly the way to go.

SUGARY SNOWBALLS
The final step in this recipe is to roll the baked, cooled cookies in icing sugar. We did the same finishing touch when we made ANNA’S PECAN BALLS, yet the snowball treatment accomplishes two things with this recipe.

First, it gives the buttery nut cookies a tiny bit more sweetness. The second is how the icing sugar coating conceals the rich chocolate and coffee flavours within. Every single person who’s tried them has the same response, “Wow, these are mocha-chocolatey!”

Need other holiday baking ideas sure to please? Check out some of our other sweet treats. Just click HERE to go to our YouTube HOLIDAY SWEETS PLAYLIST. You’ll see all of or holiday baking videos in one place for easy reference.

Then after that, there’s just one thing you need to do: make these CHOCOLATE MOCHA SNOWBALLS!

INGREDIENTS
For the butter cookie dough (makes enough for 2 batches)
1 pound of butter (4 sticks), softened
1 1/3 cups of granulated sugar
¾ teaspoon of kosher salt
3 egg yolks, room temperature
1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract
4 2/3 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
Flavour enhancements (makes enough for 1 batch, double for 2):
¼ cup of cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of espresso powder
1 cup of finely chopped pecans
To finish:
½ cup of icing sugar
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Preheat oven to 350°F with the rack in the middle position.
2) Prepare the butter cookie dough: Place butter into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment running on low. Add the sugar and salt and mix until fully incorporated. Add the egg yolks one at a time, blending after each addition. Add the vanilla. With the mixer still running on low, slowly add the flour until a soft dough forms.
3) Transfer the dough onto a piece of parchment and divide in two. Return half of the dough into the mixing bowl. Wrap up other half and refrigerate until use.
4) With half of the butter cookie dough in the bowl of the stand mixer, turn tit on low. Add the cocoa and espresso powders and mix well. Add the pecans and mix until fully incorporated.
5) Form dough into 1-inch balls and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake for 18 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring onto wire rack to cool completely. Roll cooled cookies in icing sugar to coat.