Grandma's Butter Balls

Poor Dean. He gets all excited to show me something and then when I eat it I'm unimpressed and I deflate his sails. I need to work on that. When he took me to his home town in Michigan a few years ago he was excited for me to have a Coney Dog at a local chain and it turned out to be a chili dog - and I don't do chili dogs. Then we went across to Canada to have a "puffio", which seemed just to be a deep fried calzone. Although, in that case, THE restaurant was closed and so we had to settle for a competitor's and it might just not have been as good as the real thing.

So Dean wanted to make his grandma's Christmas cookies, which he called butter balls. He excitedly called up his mom and got the recipe. I looked at it and said, "oh, Mexican wedding cookies". NNNOOOOOO!!! I told him and showed him on the internet Mexican wedding cookies and Russian teacakes, which are basically the same thing. I finally told him that his grandma's recipe was different in that she included honey.

So here is the recipe for grandma's butter balls.



2 c flour
2 c chopped walnuts or pecans
1 c butter
2 t vanilla
1/4 c honey
1/2 t salt
powdered sugar

Cream the butter. Add honey, salt, vanilla, and flour. Mix thoroughly. Add in nuts and fully incorporate.

Scoop small amounts of dough with a melon baller and roll in your hands to form balls. Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 300 degrees for 30-40 mins.

Remove from oven and roll balls in powdered sugar once while hot and then again when cooled. (I used a sugar shaker to shake for the second coating.)

Makes about four dozen.