Newfoundland Snowballs (or Saint-Pierre Macarons). There are many, many versions of snowballs across the East Coast with recipes passed between friends and relatives.Julie Van Rosendaal/The Globe and Mail
Jutting out into the North Atlantic, making up the easternmost point of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador is known for its exceptional food culture, driven by a rugged terroir and a population with a strong sense of place.
Inuit, Innu and Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous communities have been fishing, foraging, hunting and gathering the foods we associate with the island of Newfoundland – Ktaqmkuk (ook-da-hum-gook) in Mi’kmaq – for millennia. The first Norse vikings and European settlers to arrive in what we now know as Canada settled in Newfoundland; as they established colonies across the East Coast, their own culinary traditions inspired now-iconic dishes such as Jiggs dinner (an all-in-one boiled dinner of corned or salt beef, potatoes, cabbage and root veggies, named after the protagonist of George McManus’s comic strip Bringing Up Father), toutons (fried bread) and blueberry or figgy duff (steamed puddings with blueberries or raisins – not figs – and warm spices) and molasses-sweetened brown bread.
Native ingredients such as partridgeberries (known in other parts of the world as low bush cranberries or lingonberries) and bakeapple (also known as cloudberries, or mkuo’qminaqsi’k in Mi’kmaq) are still widely foraged and used in baked goods, preserves and spirits.
Like many dishes that evolved from imported ingredients and culinary traditions, snowballs are loved by locals in kitchens across the province. The two-bite confections are made with a mixture of sugar, butter, cocoa, oats and coconut, cooked on the stovetop, chilled and rolled into balls. There is no clear origin story, though there are hundreds of versions credited to Newfoundland nans, and the earliest published recipe I came across was in The Treasury of Newfoundland Dishes, a compilation of recipes from thousands of home cooks, first released in 1958. (It only calls for 2 tablespoons of cocoa, a drastic difference from the 1/2 to 3/4 cup in most online recipes, many of which profess to be the original.)
In Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory archipelago just off the south coast of Newfoundland, the mixture is shaped into squares and they’re called macarons – not the fancy almond meringue cookies shaped like tiny burgers, but the French pronunciation of macaroon.
Though many Newfoundlanders strongly associate snowballs with the holiday season, their chewy fudge-like texture means they last longer than baked cookies and don’t crumble, making them particularly well-suited to lunch boxes. (They freeze well too; their sugar content keeps them from becoming solid, and they’re deliciously chewy straight from the freezer.)
Recipe: Newfoundland Snowballs or Saint-Pierre Macarons
There are many, many versions of snowballs in new and old cookbooks, passed between friends and relatives and, of course, on the internet. Most recipes are similar in ingredients and technique but differ wildly in their ratios. Some call for evaporated milk, which is more common on the East Coast, and plant-based milk (particularly coconut) works well, too.
1 1/2 cups sugar (white or brown)
1 cup milk (dairy or oat, coconut or other plant-based milk)
1/2 cup butter
2 cups oats (quick, if you’d like a finer texture)
1 cup grated coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch of salt
Extra finely grated coconut, for coating
In a large saucepan, bring the sugar, milk and butter to a boil; reduce the heat and cook, stirring often to prevent the mixture from boiling over, for six minutes.
Remove from the heat and stir in the oats, coconut, cocoa, vanilla and salt. To make thin squares, pour the mixture into a parchment-lined 9x13-inch pan and spread it out evenly. Or for balls, let the mixture cool in the saucepan (or transfer to a bowl), cool and refrigerate until it firms up.
Roll the mixture into balls or cut into squares, put about half a cup of coconut into a shallow bowl and roll the balls or flip the squares to coat, adding more coconut as you need it.
Makes about 15 squares or two to three dozen snowballs.