Name: White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 27 min
Ingredients: 2 cups all purpose flour; 3/4 cup crushed vanilla wafers; 2 teaspoons cornstarch; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon sea salt; 1 cup unsalted butter; 2/3 cup white sugar; 2/3 cup brown sugar; 2 teaspoons pure vanilla; 3 tablespoons pure maple syrup; 1 large egg; 1 egg yolk; 1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips; 1 1/4 cups macadamia nuts, chopped

Jump to Recipe

White chocolate macadamia nut cookies have always been one of my husband’s favorite. To be honest, we used to buy a bunch of white chocolate macadamia nut cookies from Subway and call it good. It’s just not a cookie I made that often, until I started this blog and thought, “I could create a recipe better than the Subway cookies.” Homemade baked goods are always better anyways. These white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are so flavorful. They are soft on the inside, with crispy edges. Trust me, you are going to want to try this recipe.

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To Chill or Not to Chill?

If you want a lot of flavor in your cookies, chilling the dough overnight is a must for this recipe. (Check out the best chocolate chip cookie recipe for another recipe where chilling the dough is essential). I know, it seems like delayed gratification because you have to wait a day before you get to taste the cookies, but I promise, it’s worth it. Make the dough ahead of time and put it in the fridge to chill overnight. Chilling the dough overnight is important because it lets the flavors marinate. The next day, bake the cookies while the dough is still chilled. Baking from chilled dough will give you a thicker, softer cookie because your butter will not melt as quickly during baking. If you choose not to chill the dough and you bake dough from room temperature, make sure that you only bake for 10 minutes instead of 12 minutes.

If you don’t trust me about chilling cookie dough, just check out all of these websites. They will tell you the same thing.

The #1 Reason Why You Should Chill Your Cookie Dough

Taste of Home: The Step Almost Everyone Skips When Making Cookies

Chilling Cookie Dough: Does it Make a Difference?

The only cookie recipe that I can’t chill the dough for is my S’more cookie recipe. I did try chilling the S’more cookie dough overnight with the marshmallow bits in it and they marshmallow bits basically disintegrated. I suppose you could chill it before adding the marshmallow bits, have the dough come to room temperature after chilling, add the marshmallow bits and stir, then chill again for 1 hour before baking. This seems like a lot of waiting, so I just don’t chill that dough.

Add Even More flavor

To add even more flavor to these white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, I decided to add in some crushed vanilla wafers. (For another recipe that adds crushed crackers, take a peek at my S’more cookie recipe). The vanilla wafers add a great flavor and they help make the edges crispy. The middle stays soft, partly because I add corn starch. Not sure the exact science of why the corn starch works this way, but it does. I use it in almost all of my cookie recipes. To learn a little more about why corn starch works to keep cookies soft, read this blog post Chocolate Chip Cookies with Cornstarch. I know it is probably weird to send you to another guy’s cookie recipe, but he explains it so much better than I can. Ha!