Pistachio Snowballs: stuffed with pistachio paste

Pistachio snowball cookie stuffed with pistachio paste

Get the Recipe: Pistachio Snowballs: stuffed with pistachio paste

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Yield32 cookies

Prep1

Cook10

Chill20

Total1 30

Ingredients

Pistachio Paste:

¾ cup pre-salted and roasted pistachios
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon water
¼ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup almond flour
¼ teaspoon almond or pistachio extract, (optional)
1-2 tablespoons neutral oil or almond liquor, (optional)

Pistachio Snowball Cookies:

1½ cups pre-salted and roasted pistachios, ground into flour, (approx. 2 cups when ground)
1¾ cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1¼ cup confectioner's (icing) sugar , (for the dough)
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup confectioner's (icing) sugar , (for coating baked cookies)

Equipment

1 kitchen scale
measuring Cups
Measuring spoons
1 Small Sauce Pot
1 spatula
1 Food thermometer
2 baking trays
silicone baking sheets or parchment paper
1 food processor
1 1 teaspoon (5ml/vol) silicone candy mold tray (optional, but recommended)
1 blender
1 medium mixing bowl
1 stand mixer with beater attachment
1 cutting board (optional)
1 chef knife (optional)
1 #50 cookie scoop (1½ tbsp or 22g capacity)
1 cookie cooling rack

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Instructions

Pistachio Paste:

First, shell the pistachios by forcing the outside shell open and letting the raw pistachio nut fall out. Separate out the green nuts from the brown ones until you have the amount of green nuts needed for the recipe and set them aside. Shells are not included in the weight/volume of nuts needed.
Measure and pour the sugar and water into a small sauce pot and turn the stove to medium-high heat. Once the sugar has dissolved and temperature of the syrup reaches 245°F (121°C), turn off the heat and add in your separated green pistachios. Stir everything around with a spatula. The syrup will turn hard and sandy as it coats the nuts and cools. Once the pistachios are coated and the sugar has fully crystallized, pour the pistachios onto a baking sheet or plate and spread them out to cool.
When cooled add the candied pistachios, almond flour, and almond extract to a food processor. Turn on the processor for about 2 minutes and let it grind the nut mixture down to a coarse meal. when you see it start to clump, add in the oil a ½ tablespoon (7.5ml) at a time. The meal will slowly become a thick paste. Stop when the paste is ground enough to be smooth but thick enough to scoop out and not spread. Add kosher salt to taste ¼ teaspoon (1.2g) at a time, if needed.
Once done take out your 1 teaspoon (5ml/vol) silicone candy mold and spoon pistachio paste into the cavities. This is optional for easier filling and shaping. You can also simply use a measuring spoon or 1 teaspoon (25mm) cookie scoop (yes they exist!) and place the cores onto a lined baking sheet. Once done scooping, the cores need to be placed in the freezer to harden for a minimum of 30 minutes.
While the pistachio cores are freezing, make the dough for the cookies.

Pistachio Snowball Cookies:

For the pistachio snowball cookies, blend pistachios ¾ cup (110g) at a time into a texture that resembles almond flour. You want to stop the blender before it starts to clump. If you miss it and it clumps a little bit that’s okay too, just don’t keep going. This texture happens really fast, like 5-10 seconds depending on the power of your blender, so don’t walk away.
Empty the pistachio flour into a medium sized bowl. To that bowl, add the rest of your dry ingredients: flour and baking powder. Give the dry ingredients a whisk or stir with a fork and set them aside.
Whip the butter at medium speed, until it gets lighter in color and visibly increases in volume (about 3-5 minutes). Add in the confectioner’s sugar (icing sugar) a little bit at time to keep it from puffing in your face. Once the sugar is all in, let that combine for another 2-3 minutes. At this point add in the egg, almond extract, and the vanilla extract. Let the mixer go until the egg and extracts have fully incorporated into the creamed butter and sugar, another 2-3 minutes. The whole mixture should look like a thick batter with a lot of air whipped in.
Now it’s time to add in the dry ingredients set aside earlier. Turn your mixer down to medium low and incorporate the flour mixture in 3-4 batches. As soon as the flour mixes in, stop the machine. Do NOT overmix. The dough should be very soft, light, and moist. If you overmix the dough it will toughen and make the cookies dense.
Scoop out the cookies and chill the dough for 20 minutes. Work in batches of 4-6 cookies at a time. It’s important to keep everything as chilled as possible, as there is a lot of butter in the cookie and your hands and the room temperature air will soften them very quickly.
Pick up a dough scoop and push a core into the center of the dough making a bowl shape. There should be enough dough protruding around the core that you can fold it over the filling. Gently roll your stuffed cookie into a ball with your hands and set it back onto the lined baking sheet in the refrigerator. YOU WILL GET MESSY. Sorry, but it’s worth it! Repeat until all the cookies are done and organized on the tray.
Leave the tray in the refrigerator so the cookies can chill a bit before baking. While they are chilling, turn your oven to 350°F (177°C). After preheating, move 13 cookies (alternate rows of 2 and 3) to a separate lined baking sheet. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes. The edges will just start to color and the tops should look dry when they are ready.
Take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool for 5-10 minutes. Set out a cooling rack over a large rectangle of parchment paper and add at least 1 cup (110g) of powdered sugar to a bowl. When the cookies can be picked up without crumbling but are still slightly warm. Add them, one-at-a-time, to the sugar and roll to coat.
Set the coated cookies onto the cooling rack to free up the backing tray and start the second batch of cookies.
This recipe makes 32-36 cookies, so if you want to bake 3 trays of cookies at once to speed things up, feel free!

Notes

Don’t forget to take the butter and eggs out of the fridge, to come to temperature, while you make the pistachio paste, so they are ready when you make the dough.
I prefer a fine texture to my cookies. If you want something a bit coarser, blend the 1st ¾ cup (110g) of whole pistachios and then chop the second to your desired texture.
The finer the chopped pieces in the 2nd ¾ cup (110g), the more the cookies will spread. I have no preference for shape here, and the spread is not a huge difference. But, it’s worth noting. If you care about spread, check the FAQs! ;)
In my opinion, these cookies are better on day 2 or 3. If you are looking to bring them to a gathering, they are an easy bake ahead option!
The cookies are good for a week, on the counter, stored in an airtight container or for 2 months in the freezer.
The pistachio paste recipe here makes about 1 cup (230g) of pistachio paste and the cookies take up between 160-180g of that. So, have fun eating some spoonfuls of leftover paste! (See FAQ for more suggestions.)
For this recipe, I like to use the express version of my pistachio paste that takes about 30 minutes to make, because the texture isn’t as important. If you want to go all in on the filling (i.e. starting with raw-unsalted pistachios and/or blanching and peeling them for a smoother texture) here’s my post on pistachio paste so you can decide which version you’d prefer to make.
DO NOT add water to the paste to try and thin it out! It will seize and take on a nougat texture. Please use oil only.

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