Plate by Roger Baumann. Photo by Marta Bartolomei Edmonds
Very little in our wedding was what anyone would expect. We celebrated our wedding on a Thursday, there were hand-painted panels of canvas hanging around the room, rocks and branches decorated each table, and our parents were seated in the table farthest away from the area where the ceremony was to take place. Scott and I ate with each guest by having a few bites of food at each table and moving on to the next. I'm sure our guests were a little puzzled, but it was a perfect day for us.
Then, there was the cake. Our wedding cake was not cake at all, it was made out of cookies: Mexican Wedding Cakes.
On the morning of our wedding day, my father and stepmother, Carolina (who did not know we were serving cookies instead of cake) gave us a beautiful engraved wedding cake knife as a present. When it came time to cut the cake, we walked over to a tall tower of Mexican Wedding Cakes. I reached for the wedding cake knife and tried to lift one of the cakes from the tower. Well, the cookies were essentially glued together with thick wads of royal icing and we had to resort to more aggressive methods of cutting the cake. The cake knife came in handy to saw through the royal icing and pry the cookies away from our impenetrable tower.
Our wedding day was flavored by these walnut buttery mounds of melt in your mouth goodness. I would not change a thing. Mexican Wedding Cakes make me smile. This easy recipe comes from Food and Wine Magazine.
Mexican Wedding Cakes
4 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons pecans, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 cup flour
pinch of salt
1. In a medium bowl, beat the butter, pecans and vanilla until creamy. Slowly add 1/3 cup of the confectioners' sugar, flour and salt and mix well. Shape the dough into a log and wrap in plastic and refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour or overnight.
2. Preheat the oven to 350° and line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. Slice the dough and roll each piece of dough into a 3/4 -inch ball. Arrange about 1 inch apart on the cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool for 5 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, gently toss the warm cookies in the remaining confectioners' sugar and set aside to cool completely.
Makes 16 cookies.