Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, snack bars and savory condiments!
For a few years now, we’ve kept a steady supply of the white chocolate macadamia nut Cliff bars in the house. They’re mainly purchased as a quick snack for Calder to take along on bike rides, but honestly, we all love them (even, or especially, Alex) as a quick treat now and then. We also used to pick up more flavors in the past, but over time we finally gave in and admitted that the only flavor we truly loved was the white chocolate macadamia. When I packed one in our bag for the park last weekend, I started to think about how it’s been way too long since I’ve actually had a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, and it was time to put the Cliff bar down and remedy that. This was the result, and it’s delicious!
While writing this post, I became curious about the history of the white chocolate and macadamia nut pairing, but information was really hard to come by. The cookie doesn’t even have it’s own wikipedia page, rather it’s just listed as a variant of the chocolate chip cookie! When I mentioned this to Calder, his response was “but it’s so much more than that”, and I couldn’t agree more. Somewhere, someone came up with this fantastic flavor pairing, and it’s time to recognize their genius.
One thing that used to stop me from making cookies on a whim was the need to soften the butter. You too? Well I’m here to tell you that you can break all the rules and make these cookies ASAP. Just take the cold butter straight from the fridge, cut it into chunks, put it in your electric mixer and mix it on medium speed for a minute or two before adding the sugar in step one below. I started doing this a few years ago with chocolate chip cookies and ever since then, I’ve noticed that I never have a problem with the cookies spreading too thin while cooking, and instead they hold their shape really well.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter (soft or not!)
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then add the vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt. Add this mixture to the butter mixture and stir slowly to combine.
- Stir in the macadamia nuts and white chocolate.
- Drop tablespoon sized portions onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the sheet and place on a cool rack as soon as they come out of the oven.
The recipe above is a modified version of this recipe. The two main changes I made were to use less sugar and changing the extract recommendation. I reduced the sugar from the original recipe by 1/4 cup, and I think it’s still plenty sweet. The other change I made isn’t necessarily for the better. The original recipe called for 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp almond. I would have loved to used the almond, but didn’t have any on hand. If you do have it, I would recommend using it!
I think these are perfectly delicious, and the pile is dwindling faster than we would like to admit! The cookies are a touch cakey, which I wouldn’t mind changing, but their flavor doesn’t suffer from the fluffier texture. I think the way to remedy this would be to use less flour, I might try just 2 cups next time. If you experiment, please let us know!