Recipe: White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

The weather has been pretty gloomy around here lately. It's wet and rainy, but this is my kind of weather! I know not everyone's crazy about rain showers and the end of summer, but that's okay because I have the perfect pick-me-up. Who doesn't love White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies?!

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

makes 24 cookies

You will need:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) *unsalted butter (room temp)
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temp)
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 cup coarsely chopped salted macadamia nuts

*If you do not have unsalted butter, it may be substituted with regular butter. However, omit the 1/2 tsp of salt.

Begin by preheating your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Cream together your butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy. It should look something like this. Make sure to use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Add your eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Mix until well combined. Your mixture should loosen up a lot and become runny.

Add your flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. You do not want to over-mix. The dough should start forming right away and on it's own. Once combined, scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl.

Add the white chocolate chips and coarsely chopped macadamia nuts. Fold them in with a rubber spatula until they are thoroughly incorporated within your dough.

Gather two tablespoons of dough into a ball and tear it in half. Place the torn side of one half face down onto your lined cookie sheet, and place the other half on top with the torn side facing up, like shown above. These are rather large cookies so place them about 2 inches apart for spreading.

Bake your cookies for 12-13 minutes or until the edges are slightly golden. They will remain puffed up and appear undone when you take them out of the oven. Let them sit on the cookie sheet to cool for 10-15 minutes. The cookies' residual heat will finish off the insides and it will begin to flatten out. Transfer them onto a wire rack to finish cooling (but they taste the best when warm).

Quite a few people have been asking me for these lately, so I'm glad I finally found the time to make them!

The original recipe is not mine and I found it here. However, I did alter the ratios slightly and adjusted the proportions to fit my needs.

This is probably one of my favorite cookies to make and from what I've heard it's a lot of my friend's favorite too hehe.

Recipe: The Best Banana Bread Ever

It's been a long time coming, but I'm back again with a not-so-new recipe. Everyone has had banana bread at least once in their life, and I've come across countless recipes, but there could only be one winner.

Banana Bread

makes 2 loaves

You will need:

• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter (room temp.)
• 4 eggs (room temp & beaten)
• 6-7 (very ripe) bananas
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda

*TIP: The riper the bananas, the better!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare 2 2x4x8 loaf pans by coating them with butter/oil and dusting them with flour.

In a large bowl, mash your bananas. Breaking them up into small pieces makes the process a little faster and easier. I like using a fork, but if I'm in a hurry, I break out the potato masher...go big or go home!

The end result is basically a huge vat of banana guts. It is going to be a little chunky, but try to avoid super large chunks. You don't want wet spots in your banana bread. 

In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or a hand electric mixer, cream your butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add your bananas and beaten eggs and mix well. At this point your batter will look a little curdled (but it's not, don't worry it's just the bananas). In another separate bowl, sift together your flour, baking soda, and salt and mix into your batter, but just until incorporated. You do not want to over mix!!!

Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans. Tap each pan on a flat surface a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. Bake for 45-50 minutes. Test the banana bread with a tooth pick or skewer. Don't worry if it is still a little wet near the surface, that can happen since there are so many bananas in this recipe.

When finished baking, place pans on a wire rack for about 10-20 minutes or until they are cool enough to touch.

Once cool enough, use a butter knife or spatula to help flip the loaves out of the pans to finish cooling completely on the wire rack. (This batch's center, as you can see, remained a little wet, which is why this little crater formed while cooling.)

My dad has had this recipe for years, ever since we still lived in San Francisco ten years ago, and we have still yet to find another that has even come close to competing with ours. If you don't believe me, you're just going to have to try it for yourself!