Kourambiedes - The Best Almond Shortbread Snowballs
These almond shorbread snow balls are based on a traditional Greek recipe for kourambiedes. They are light and fluffy they melt in your mouth and leave you with a full flavour of roasted almonds, with the airiness of the light shortbread.
Servings 50 small almond snow balls
Equipment
- Stand mixer
- Blender
Ingredients
Almond shortbread cookies
- 330 grams whole almonds skin on (1½ cups)
- 340 grams unsalted butter (just under 3 sticks)
- 50 grams icing sugar (½ cup)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 500 grams self-raising flour (4 cups)
Snow topping
- 100 grams icing sugar (1 cup)
Instructions
Roast the almonds
- Preheat your oven to 180°C or 350°F fan setting ( or 200°C/400°F non-fan setting).
- Lay your whole almonds out onto a baking tray. Spread them out so that each one has its own space.
- Toast the almonds in the oven for 8-10 minutes until slightly brown in colour. As soon as you smell roasted almonds, remove them from the oven and leave to cool. They burn quite quickly after you get those first smells coming from the oven, so remove them quickly afterwards.
Almond shortbread dough
- In the meantime start to beat the butter. Make sure it is soft when you start. Place it in a stand mixer together with the 50 grams of icing sugar.
- Beat for 15 minutes on a relatively high setting. This is the most important step of making ‘kourambiedes’. By then end the butter should be a white color and the consistency of whipped cream.
- While the butter is being worked on you can blend your roasted almonds. Place them in a blender and blend for a good few minutes. You want them to go past breadcrumb consistency and become a paste which sticks to the sides of the blender. When they do you can scoop it off of the sides and bottom of the blender, into a mixing bowl.
- Add the almonds to the whipped butter and icing sugar in the stand mixer, along with the vanilla extract.
- Add your self-raising flour a bit at a time, mixing until just combined. The mixture should be crumbly. However, when you pick up a ball of it and squeeze it together in your hand, it should hold together in a lump. That’s the consistency you are looking for.
Shape into ball cookies
- Preheat the oven to 180°C or 350°F fan setting (200°C or 400°F regular setting). Line two large oven trays with greaseproof baking paper or add some oil spray.
- Scoop out about half a tablespoon of the mixture. Squeeze it into a ball in the palm of your hand. Gently shape it further into a ball by squeezing it between your hands. If it holds together, you can also roll them into balls between your palms. Or you could even use an ice cream scoop and compress the dough into the scoop, before releasing it onto the oven tray.
- Repeat this until you’ve rolled all the dough into balls and they’re lined up on two large baking trays.
- Cook on the middle shelf of the oven for just 8-10 minutes. You don’t want them to be golden (as they will be overcooked and too crumbly) so they will look slightly undercooked when you remove them and that’s fine. Set them aside to cool.
Dust with 'snow'
- Let them cool for a few minutes. Then while they’re still warm, add the first layer of icing sugar by sieving it over the almond shortbread balls.
- Very gently, roll the balls around in the icing sugar until they are coated on all sides. As they’re still firming up after coming out of the oven, move them around with care so that they don’t crumble.
- When they’re completely cooled you can sieve over a second layer of icing sugar to complete the snowballs. Place them on a festive serving plate to enjoy over the holidays.