Toast pecans on a baking sheet in a 325°F oven for approximately 8 minutes. How long it takes depends on how light or dark your pan is. This is not the time to multi task, always start with 5 minutes and check then maybe put another 2 on your timer. You will know when they are done when you can smell the pecans and they will have darkened in colour slightly.
Let them cool before chopping them. We use a mini food processer my mom has had for over 30 years. If you don't have a food processer you can chop them with a knife. We chopped ours up coarsely. You don't want them too big but you also don't want to chop them so small that you have created pecan flour.
In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar with your hand mixer before adding the water and vanilla extract.
On low speed gently stir in the flour and pecans. When everything is mostly combined switch to gently stirring with a spatula. You want to ensure you are not over working the batter.
Next you will roll out 1 tablespoon of the batter into a ball. We have learnt to roll ours until smooth if you want a smooth cookie.This year we tried something different and weighed the batter to make more consistent sized cookies. If you have a scale then you should give it a try, we weighed ours out to 20 grams before rolling them. Bake in a 325°F oven for about 20 minutes. We will sometimes bake them a bit longer to about 23 minutes.
Let them cool on a rack until they are just warm to the touch. Remove any crumbs along the edge and roll in some icing sugar. If the cookie is too hot the icing sugar will melt. Let the other cookies cool a bit more before trying again. It helps to do the first coat while they are warm because the icing sugar will stick to the cookie. Once cooled we will usually roll them a second time in the icing sugar to ensure they are thoroughly coated.
You will notice we did not tell you how much icing sugar to use. We recommend you start with ½ cup of icing sugar and just add to your bowl as needed. Enjoy!
