Monday, March 8, 2010

white chocolate macadamia nut cookies - credit due to my nut-chopping slave

white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies - 19My amazing boyfriend took my cousin and I out to a fancy-shmancy dinner the previous night. We ordered yummy sushi, fried calamari, new england clam chowder, and basically all the works. To repay him, my cousin sneakily asked him what his favorite type of cookie was (and yes she did this on her own without even asking me). He supposedly responded with "white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies". I found this odd, because in my head I thought he didn't like macadamia nuts in his cookies. Regardless, I took her word for it and we decided to make a little thank-you present for him. Oh and by the way- mac nuts are probably the hardest nut to find (not counting in Hawaii where they're everywhere). It took us three grocery stores to finally find somewhere that sold them (and what a rip-off too).

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The dough recipe was fairly basic; nothing too distant from the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe. I did choose to use my favorite non-Cook's-Illustrated recipe website (AllRecipes.com) to find this cookie. They generally have good recipes, and the best part is reading all the ratings and reviews.

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Unfortunately there were no photos of us preparing the cookie dough because I didn't predict how fast the sun would set. On the bright side, I had the best time of my life forcing my little cousin to be macadamia-nut-chopping-slave. You see, we realized the nuts (which we toasted, of course) were too large to put in the cookies. So to fix this, someone had to chop these spherical crunchy nuts into little bite site pieces. (And by someone, I really mean my cousin.) I pretended I was busy with other things, forcing her to sit at my dining room table for about 20 minutes chopping a whole bag of rolling nuts on a bouncy pan with a dull knife. My roommate came home and felt so bad for her because first of all, she was sitting in the dark because I forgot to turn the lights on for her, and second of all, she had the most miserable look on her face. It was the funniest shit I ever saw in my life.

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She did get repaid though, don't worry. We both got our fair share of eating this delicious cookie dough (finally, another pro-raw-cookie-dough advocate!). We both agreed that this cookie dough topped many other cookie doughs out there (and yes, I've had my fair share of batters to make this judgment).

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The cookies came out pretty good surprisingly. I was a little apprehensive not using my faithful Cook's Illustrated or The Chewy recipe, but I'm happy to say that AllRecipes.com was a great runner up.

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So what did my boyfriend think of his thank-you present? Once I told him what we made, he said he didn't even like white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Okay- so I don't know where the discrepancies came from (his side or her side) but apparently they are not his favorite and I was indeed correct. Anyways, he still ate them and said they tasted fine. He took them home and they were gone within a few days, so at least somebody out there ate them (and hopefully enjoyed them as well).

---RECIPE---
Taken from All Recipes.

ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts (toasted, and preferably chopped by someone else so you can get a good laugh watching them)
1 cup coarsely chopped white chocolate (white chocolate morsels do just fine)

directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla and almond extracts. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in the macadamia nuts and white chocolate. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

amount:
Makes about 4 dozen. (For some reason we didn't get that many. Perhaps we ate too much dough?)

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