Take an easy and very versatile cookie dough – with a deep caramel-like flavor thanks to generous amounts of brown sugar and vanilla, and a soft texture from extra-creamy European-style butter and precisely-measured flour lightened with a spoonful of cornstarch. Then stir in the goodies of your choice. Semisweet chocolate chips would be a fine place to start, or take it up a level with a combination of three types of chocolate chips to make Soft Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies. Or something really special: White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies, crammed with big, jagged shards of white chocolate and chunks of buttery macadamia nuts.
I’m a big fan of recipes that lend themselves to adaptation. (Vegetable soups are great for that – for example this one or this one. Salads, too.) In a savory dish, variations can arise from a need to use up what I have on hand, or a desire to take advantage of what’s fresh or seasonal. Just changing the herbs, spices and aromatics in a recipe can be a simple way to transport it from one cuisine to another (say, Tex-Mex to Mediterranean) and give it an entirely new profile.
In baking you have to be a little careful – exact measurements of key ingredients such as butter and flour are essential. But when it comes to mix-ins, anything goes. So once I’d nailed the recipe for my ideal chocolate chip cookie (soft but not cakey, moist – but tender, not chewy), it was the obvious starting point for these White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies. The same dough, the same process, with the same great texture but a deliciously different flavor.
White chocolate and macadamia nuts are a luxurious combination. White chocolate is significantly sweeter than the usual semisweet chips, but the salty, savory, creamy-crunchy macadamia nuts are the perfect complement, balancing the sweetness yet compounding the richness in every bite.
Making these ahead and what to do with leftovers:
- These cookies will stay soft and moist for several days, stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
- The cookies can be frozen, either after they’ve baked, or as raw balls of dough. Thaw the raw dough in the refrigerator overnight before baking.
White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies
Ingredients
- 2¼ cups (9½ ounces or 270 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or ¼ teaspoon Morton’s
- ¾ cup (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, preferably European-style, at soft room temperature
- 7/8 cup (¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons) brown sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 9 ounces white chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 2/3 cup (3 ounces) coarsely chopped macadamia nuts
Directions
- Step 1 Combine the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and stir with a whisk until well combined.
- Step 2 Put the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on medium speed until fluffy, 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, then add the egg and then the egg yolk, one at a time, beating well and scraping the bowl after each addition. Beat in the vanilla, then scrape the bowl.
- Step 3 Add the dry ingredients and stir them in with just a couple of turns of the beater on low speed. In the same bowl that the flour was just in, combine the white chocolate and macadamias and toss until they’re well mixed. Scoop out about 1/3 cup of the mixture and set it aside, then add the rest to the dough, stirring in by hand with the spatula until the white chocolate and nuts are evenly distributed throughout the dough and all the flour is fully incorporated. Don’t overmix the dough.
- Step 4 Chill the dough for 1 hour. Toward the end of the chilling time, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line three large baking sheets with parchment.
- Step 5 Scoop out the dough using a cookie scoop or spoon, picking up about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie. Quickly and gently roll the dough between your palms to form a neat ball and place it on one of the prepared sheets. Scoop and roll seven more cookies, arranging them on the baking sheet with plenty of room between them. Gently press a few of the reserved white chocolate chunks and nuts into the tops of the balls of dough without flattening the dough. Return the unused portion of the dough to the refrigerator to keep cold.
- Step 6 Bake the cookies for 10 to 11 minutes, just until the edges of the cookies are turning light golden brown. The middles of the cookies will still look underdone. Remove the baking sheet to a cooling rack and cool the cookies on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer them to the rack to cool completely.
- Step 7 Continue to keep the unused portion of the dough chilled while the current batch is in the oven, and use a cold baking sheet for the next batch. You should get about 30 cookies from this recipe, which means baking four batches (three batches of 8 and one batch of 6). By the time you get to the fourth batch, the baking sheet you used for the first batch should be cool enough to use again.
