Vegan Snowball Cookies (Italian Wedding Cookies Recipe) (2024)

FAQs

Why are my snowball cookies falling apart after baking? ›

There was probably too much flour added or they were over-baked. Add another tablespoon of butter or a tablespoon of milk. If they are falling apart a few days later, then they were sitting out too long. Keep them in an airtight container to help them last longer.

If you don't refrigerate, they will come out flatter, more like a traditional drop cookie. Still good, but I love how they bake up if you refrigerate the dough. I find it easiest to make the dough the day before and they bake it up the next day or so.

If you found your cookies to spread too much in the oven, there are a host of things that can cause this. Your butter could be too warm. You may have improperly measured the flour or the sugar (use that scoop and level method!). You could have placed the dough balls on a sheet pan that was warm.

If you use too much butter, the cookies will end up flat and greasy. And if you use too little flour, the amount of butter and sugar will be proportionally too high, meaning the cookies will spread for the aforementioned reasons.

If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

Dough that's too airy.

The goal, usually, is to only incorporate the two ingredients without reaching the "light and fluffy" stage. When you mix the butter and sugar together at high speed or for too long, you'll aerate the dough excessively, causing the cookies to rise—and then fall—in the oven.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Italian wedding cookies typically contain almonds or hazelnuts and are flavored with almond extract, vanilla extracts and spices like cinnamon or anise. Mexican wedding cookies, on the other hand, use a combination of ground nuts such as pecans and walnuts, as well as butter, sugar and sometimes chocolate chips.

Too much flour causes the dough to become dry and crumbly, which prevents it from flattening out during baking. As a result, your cookies will stay in their original shape instead of spreading out into nice circles.

How to keep snowball cookies from spreading? ›

Use a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.

Adjust Salt

Next, if you're swapping unsalted for salted butter, reduce the amount of salt listed in the recipe to adjust for the salt in the butter. Take ¼ teaspoon of salt away for every stick of butter used*. Do the opposite if you're swapping salted for unsalted butter.

Adjust leavening agents: Baking powder and baking soda are responsible for the rise and structure of cookies. If your cookies are too flat, try slightly increasing these leavening agents. Conversely, if your cookies are overly puffy and then collapse into flatness, it could be due to using too much leavening agent.

Chilling cookie dough before baking it can prevent the fat from melting too quickly in the oven, which results in flat cookies. Be patient and let your dough rest in the refrigerator for the recommended time noted in the recipe before baking.

Too much sugar can cause cookies to come out flat and crispy instead of soft and chewy. This goes for both white sugar and brown sugar. Not enough flour could also be the culprit. Especially with baking, there's much less wiggle room when it comes to having the proper ingredient ratios.

Dry – “Dry” or “Crumbly” dough is a product of over-mixing or using too much of any ingredient during the mixing process. This can be reversed by adding one to two tablespoons of liquid (water, milk or softened butter) to your mix.

The cracks in crinkle cookies or molasses cookies occur when the top of the cookie dries out before the interior has set. The means that as the cookie expands, it starts to crack the dry surface.

Roll it too thin, and the dough will be really fragile and may easily tear or break. Roll it too thick, and you run the risk of the cookies not baking evenly or cooking all the way through. → Follow this tip: For super soft, tender sugar cookies, roll the dough to 1/4-inch thick.