12 Days of Christmas: Coconut snowball cookies

Over the past few years I have started a little collection of standard Christmas cookies and this, my friends, is one of the collection members.

These may look a little complicated, but I promise it is easier than you think.  The Martha Stewart recipe originally called for sandwiching two cookies together with frosting in between, but I prefer to double the number of cookies just by dolloping frosting on top and covering with coconut.  And it might have something to do with increasing the cookie-to-frosting ratio.  Maybe.

Allow me to break this recipe down into the quick easy steps (because the full play-by-play from Martha does come across as a little intimidating)…

The first step is to grind up some coconut to go into the cookie batter (this is separate from what you put on top of the cookie).

Next you mix up the cookie batter, which is so good that I could pretty much eat it all before baking (butter and sugars first with eggs and vanilla, then add in flour mixture and coconut).

Mmmm…coconut cookie dough…

I used a cookie dough scoop to form nice rows of “snowballs” and baked them up.

While the baking magic was happening, I mixed 1 stick of butter with 1 cup of confectioners sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla to make some buttercream frosting.

Then it was a matter of frosting…

…and dipping in a bowl of coconut…

Who said you couldn’t have a white Christmas?

We attended a little holiday gathering this weekend and my snowballs made an appearance, along with some Chocolate Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies and some Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars (and another recipe that I’ll feature next week).

Psst…I’m getting into the holiday spirit by writing 12 holiday themed posts leading up to Christmas.  In case you missed it, here are the other posts: Day 1: Felt Ornaments; Day 2: Holiday Door Swag…