White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

Last Friday night, Kevin and I went out with his sister and her husband to dinner and a play.  While at the play, Cindy announced that Warren had to get his favorite White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies at the concession before it started.  Upon further inspection of the cookies, which were quite big and looked like your normal everyday bakery cookie, I challenged myself and made sure he knew I could out do that cookie.  I’ve hardly ever made White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies because they are not a favorite here.  But for some reason I had a bar of white chocolate and a bag of macadamia nuts, so the challenge was easy!

On Saturday, Warren came over to help Kevin with a couple issues getting his new, huge fish tank up and running (Basically, Kevin ordered a new glass tank to replace the scratched up acrylic one that was here and upon getting it in the house, realized it doesn’t fit the space.  The new tank is bigger than the old one!  Once he talked with Warren, the solution will be easily remedied with a little construction.  Warren is an expert in those kinds of things.  Kevin does accounting. ;)  While he was here, I whipped up the cookies, to thank Warren.  Well, and so he could see that MY homemade cookies are much better than the ones he liked so much at the concession stand.  (Though he’s already been a recipient of my many baked goods and really he already knew that.  I made him a few giant ones, so they’d be more like the bakery cookies.

 

These were about five inches in diameter.  They are really good cookies—I just say that (really good instead of great) because white chocolate and macadamia nuts aren’t my favorite.  I also made a bunch of normal sized cookies and sent Warren and Cindy home with a big plateful.  While here, Warren ate a few right off the hot baking sheet.  He liked them a lot.  Since I only had about half the white chocolate the recipe called for, I divided the dough in half before adding the chocolate and nuts and only made half with the white chocolate.  With the other half of the dough, I added some milk chocolate with almonds because I had a big bar of that, too.  (I liked the milk chocolate ones better, but truth be told and I’m totally a dark chocolate kind of gal now.  Didn’t use to be, but I’m pretty much sold on GOOD quality dark chocolate now, almost exclusively.  I refrigerated some of the dough until the next day and I thought those were even better (which were the ones with the milk chocolate almond bar in them)—I didn’t end up photographing any of those.

This cookie dough makes a great cookie no matter what you put inside!  I found the recipe for these on Ashley’s blog, eat me, delicious.  She got the recipe from Bon Appetit Magazine (Dec. 2006), and it was adapted from a Tyler Florence recipe.  Here’s the recipe--

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

3 cups all purpose flour (360 grams)

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup light brown sugar, packed (220 grams)

3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 grams)

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups white chocolate, chopped (8 1/2 ounces)

1 cup coarsely chopped roasted macadamia nuts (about 4 1/2 ounces)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Sift flour, baking soda and salt together in a medium sized bowl.  In bowl of electric mixer, beat butter until fluffy.  Add both sugars and beat until blended.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  Add vanilla and beat well.  Add dry ingredients and beat just until combined.  Use a spoon or spatula to stir in the white chocolate and nuts.

Scoop and drop desired sized cookie dough balls onto parchment lined baking sheets leaving about 2 inches between cookies.  Bake just until golden, about 15 minutes for large cookies and 12 for smaller cookies.  Cool on baking sheets.

How cute is this little guy?  Just sitting at the island playing a little piano and singing Happy Birthday to the top of his lungs.

“Wait a second, you takin’ my picture again?  I’m out of here.”

I’m adding the link for these cookies to Melt In Your Mouth Mondays over at Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms blog.