Cookie Monster

Is it the holiday season or the deepening cold that has me desiring, and subsequently baking cookies? I would have to believe it is the latter given that I have not been invited to participate in a holiday cookie exchange ever, and I know, given previous years, I will continue to crave small little cakes well past the yuletide.
I am very particular about which types of cookies will feed this seasonal urge. You won’t get an oatmeal-raisin or any other dried fruit-studded biscuit setting up in my oven. No, they must be rich and rife with nuts and in all probability strewn with chocolate, white chocolate that is. I don’t mind if they are crisp or chewy as long as they are fresh. I tend to make the cookie batter, bake off a day or two’s allotment, then freeze the remaining dough which is rolled into a log for easy whacking off at a moment's notice. Yes, this keeps me in right-from-the-oven pleasure, but it definitely curtails my daily snacking.

I am not sure what got into me the other day, but there I was thinking peanut butter cookies, and I rarely, if ever, eat peanuts. So of course, there was no peanut butter in my refrigerator, but there was macadamia nut butter made a couple weeks earlier.

One would wonder why in this Skippy-spreading culture of ours, there would be no peanut butter but macadamia. That is an easy answer, for while I was a fanatical fluff and jelly sandwich youngster, I have grown to appreciate the potential of a nut spread. Having run out of cashew butter, my usual nutty smear, I decided to throw macadamias into a food processor, and let them whiz until they became a smooth, decadent spread. Any nut can be treated in this fashion, and the yield is approximately one-cup whole produces one-cup processed. I figured that peanuts and macadamias were both high in fat, so why not an alternative version? To my satiating pleasure it did work, and a trail of crumbs can now track me down.


Macadamia Butter-White Chocolate Cookies – yields approx 24
1/2-cup light brown sugar
1/2-cup white sugar
1/4-pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2-cup macadamia butter
1 egg
2-teaspoons vanilla
1-1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4-teaspoon baking soda
1/2-teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
5-ounces white chocolate – roughly chopped


Beat the sugars and butter together until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add in the macadamia butter. Beat the sugars and butters again until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking soda , baking powder and salt.

Mix the flour into the sugar/butter mixture, and then stir in the white chocolate to distribute throughout the dough.

Chill the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or two.




Pre-heat the oven to 350-degrees.

Place about a tablespoon’s worth of the cookie dough on a parchment-lined baking tray, and gently press to flatten – making it about 1/4-inch thick. Cook about nine per baking tray with about 1/2-inch between each cookie. Bake for 11 to 12 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven, and then allow to cool for a minute or two before transferring to a cooling rack.