Great Great Aunt Eurania's Snowball Cookies

Rachel here.

So, Monday I promised you all the easiest cookie recipe of all time. Tucked among these...

And these...

Is this!

And no, it's not an address book. Or, you know, it IS, but it doesn't contain addresses. Instead, it contains recipes recorded by my great great aunt Eurania and given to my grandmother. My parents brought it out for me the last time they visited and I was ecstatic. Nothing quite says I-lived-through-the-depression like an address turned into a recipe book, does it?

It's a fascinating read, too. Filled with anecdotes (such as, This recipe has been Methodist tested and repeatedly approved...because, you know, Methodists are the measure of deliciousness or something like that) and jello salads, my southern great great auntie was a missionary on a mission to convince my grandmother of the wonders of the pecan. There are pecans in EVERYTHING, and pages of lists of other foods that would be well served by the addition of pecans. There's even a recipe from Eurania's grandmother (that would be my great great great grandmother...come on, how cool is that that I can cook something my great great great grandmother cooked? I'm totally geeking out over this) that I'm fixing to try just as soon as I recover from the amount of lard it requires.

But anyway, tucked among these pages of tidy script is a recipe for Snowball Cookies. I'm sure you've eaten these--they're round and rolled in powdered sugar and essentially are simple shortbread cookies with pecans added to them. Sometimes they're called Mexican Wedding Cookies. I'd probably call them that instead of Snowballs if my great great aunt didn't have such an awesomely unusual name. Mexican Wedding Cookie definitely sounds more exciting than Snowball Cookie, but nothing sounds more exciting than Great Great Aunt Eurania's Snowball Cookies. In fact, I think there should probably be an exclamation mark added at the end.

So now, without further ado, I present to you Great Great Aunt Eurania's Snowball Cookies!

Sorry I don't have a picture to offer of the cookie proper. They're umm...all gone.

In the Details

Since I started back at school I've become a serial boxed cereal eater. I'm sure I'll return to the glory days of granola baking, but for the past several months the name of the game has been ease. Needless to say, breakfast is a little less exciting when it's poured straight from a box, particularly when it's the same box day after day, week after week.

The excitement--the feeling of self-tending--then, comes in the little details.

I love vintage Pyrex. Love it, love it, love it. Durable and kitschy, it's something I can get behind on a number of levels. Over the years I've been making this interest known and have managed to accumulate what is surely becoming a respectable collection. Over our visit to Connecticut my mom added to our stash, gifting us with cereal bowls (and the original primary-colored storage containers...*swoon*) which brought the collection into tableware, a kitchen arena that up until then was devoid of any Pyrex save a lonely butter dish.

Now every morning I pour my unexciting and super healthy boxed cereal into a vintage Pyrex cereal bowl. It makes me smile a little bit and think of my mom and it makes breakfast feel just that little bit special which, I think, is an excellent addition to the start of a day.

-R