White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
These white-chocolate macadamia nut cookies utilize brown butter, an extra egg yolk, and a few other tricks to make them dense but soft with coveted crispy edges. A hint of almond and lemon really adds extra depth of flavor and a welcome brightness.
Get the Recipe: White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
Ingredients
- 12 tablespoons browned butter
- 1¾ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 egg + 1 egg yolk, 65g
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon tahitian vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice (1-2 lemons)
- 2 tablespoons lemon zest (2 lemons)
- ⅔ cup brown sugar, tightly packed
- 8 ounces white chocolate, 2 bars chopped
- 8 ounces toasted macadamia nuts, chopped
Equipment
- 1 half-sheet baking tray
- parchment paper or silicone baking sheet
- 1 cookie scoop
- 1 stand mixer
- 1 saucepan
- 1 spatula
- 1 cutting board
- 1 chef or serrated knife
Instructions
- First, add the butter to a small saucepan on medium heat. Make sure to continuously stir or swirl the pan as the butter melts and then froths. When you see the milk solids turn a light brown color, turn off the stove and move the pan from the heat. The butter will continue to cook and should end up a nice warm brown. Let it cool just enough to pour into a small bowl or container and place the browned butter in the refrigerator to re-harden for about 30 minutes. You don’t want it to completely harden just go opaque and start to thicken at the edges.
- Next, turn on the oven to 275°F (135°C) and add your macadamia nuts to a baking sheet. once the oven comes to temperature, bake them in the oven for about 5 minutes. While the nuts are in the oven, prep the white chocolate by giving both bars a rough chop and setting them aside. After the macadamia nuts have been taken out of the oven and cooled, give them a rough chop and set them aside as well.
- Once the toppings are prepped, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with whisk attachment, add in the granulated sugar and egg plus one egg yolk. Turn the mixer to medium speed until the egg and sugar start to lighten considerably in color, about 2-3 minutes. Next, add in the vanilla extract, almond extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Let the mixer continue for another 1-2 minutes until the ingredients become homogeneous and all of the granulated sugar has dissolved.
- Turn down the mixer to low and whisk in the cooled browned butter and brown sugar. Once that just comes together, turn off the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Turn it back on low and add in the flour mixture. Shut off the machine as soon as everything comes together. Do not overmix.
- Now you can fold the toppings into the dough. Once that is complete, grab a #24, 2in (5cm) cookie scoop (it should hold roughly 2.5tbsp or 50g of dough) and scoop cookies onto a silicone lined baking tray. Cover the cookies with cling wrap and make sure to seal the wrap to the sides of the tray. You want to keep as much air from the dough as possible. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours and up to 24 hours.
- After resting the dough, preheat your oven to 350°F (177°C) and add the pre-scooped cookies to a silicone mat lined baking sheet with at least 2in (5cm) of space between them. Bake for 15-16 minutes. The edges of the cookies should just start to brown and the middle should be completely puffed and not look wet. Let cool for 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack.
Notes
- I know, 6+ hours of waiting for the dough to rest seems insane, but I promise the texture and flavor are so much better when you allow the flour to hydrate and the ingredients to mellow. You know how chili is always better the next day? Same principle here.
- Important baking, not burning note! If you are using the #24 scoop, parchment paper doesn’t provide enough insulation for the cookie bottoms and they will brown too fast (one downside to baking soda’s alkalinity and browning super powers).
- If you want to use parchment, make smaller cookies. I suggest a #50, 1.6in (4cm) cookie scoop. It should hold roughly 1.3tbsp or 25g of dough. You can bake these at either 350°F (177°C) for 9 minutes or 325°F (163°C) for 11 minutes. The parchment paper lined tray actually works better than silicone on smaller cookies.
- This recipe makes between 24-28 cookies with the #24 scoop. If you aren’t looking to make that many at once, scoop out all the dough balls and bake however many you want. Then arrange the remaining dough balls on a baking tray so they aren’t touching and freeze them. Once frozen, you can move them to a freezer bag for up to 3 months.
Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions
A lot of tinkering went into this cookie dough.
I wanted the dough to be a little dense in the middle with just a hint of crisp on the edges. To do that, I made the following adjustments to traditional chocolate chip cookie dough:
– Added lemon juice as a flavorful way to make up for the liquid lost by browning the butter;
– Added an extra egg yolk to help get a softer, denser center;
– Used more brown sugar than granulated sugar to combat spread;
– Aerated the dough using the eggs and granulated sugar, not softened butter;
– And, used baking soda, instead of baking powder because: 1.) it makes a denser cookie and
2.) lemon juice provides the acid to activate the baking soda.
I recommend using Neilsen-Massey extracts whenever possible. They are by far the best in the market. All of their extracts can be found on Amazon, but I have also seen them in local kitchen supply stores and specialty supermarkets. I have even seen their pure vanilla extract in TJ Maxx, for those of you who live in the USA and want to take a chance. (I am in no way sponsored, just a hard-core fan girl)
In a word, ABSOLUTELY.
In multiple words: YES, AND…Always keep the chocolate amount the same and substitute mix-ins on the nut side, though you can definitely use half mini morsels and half chopped chocolate for added fudgy texture.
Keep the dough ratios the same and consider these alternatives:
Use dark chocolate, madagascar-bourbon vanilla extract, orange zest and juice, and toasted, sliced almonds;
Sub the macadamia nuts for a 1:1 mix of toasted, chopped pistachios and dried cranberries;
Halve the macadamia nuts and add a mix of dried tropical fruits like mango, papaya, guava, and toasted coconut. It’s up to you about which citrus zest and juice to use, but lime sounds nice here;
Use Andes mint chips and chopped dark chocolate, peppermint extract (sub almond) and mexican vanilla extract. Add 1/4c (25g) unsweetened cocoa powder (minus the same measurement in flour) and 1tsp (1g) espresso powder. Replace the lemon juice with buttermilk (acid for the baking soda) and nix the zest.
Phew! I feel like Mark Bittman, just throwing out recipes in paragraph form!
Might as well throw in a dad joke, “Feel free to go nuts!”
Sure. But, be forewarned, it adds some extra steps and you may break your cookie scoop trying to work through the chilled dough. How do I know that? Well of course I broke mine. Totally not embarrassing at all! If you want to scoop after the dough has chilled, I recommend letting it soften up a bit at room temperature, scooping, and then chilling for 20-30 minutes before baking. Good Luck!
