Macadamia & cranberry American cookies

These freezable biscuits are completely irresistible and make a great gift for kids to give to teachers or grandparents

Recipe uploaded by

Sara Buenfeld

24 ratings 4

Recipe by Sara Buenfeld

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Tested

Difficulty and servings

Makes 55

Preparation and cooking times

Prep 20 mins

Cook 12 mins

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Melt 170g of the chocolate, then allow to cool. Beat in the butter, eggs, sugars and vanilla, preferably with an electric hand whisk, until creamy. Stir in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and cranberries with two-thirds of the remaining chocolate and macadamias, to make a stiff dough.
Using a tablespoon measure or a small ice-cream scoop, drop small mounds onto a large baking dish, spacing them well apart, then poke in the reserved chocolate, nuts and berries. Bake in batches for 12 mins until pale golden, leave to harden for 1-2 mins, then cool on a wire rack.
To freeze, open-freeze the raw cookie dough scoops on baking trays; when solid, pack them into a freezer container, interleaving the layers with baking parchment. Use within 3 months. Bake from frozen for 15-20 mins.

Hazelnut & raisin cookies

Make as above, with 280g flour, replacing the white chocolate for dark chocolate and the macadamias and cranberries for hazelnuts and raisins. Pour boiling water over the raisins and allow them to plump up a little, then dry thoroughly - this stops them being too hard and catching in the oven.

149 kcalories, protein 2g, carbohydrate 18g, fat 8 g, saturated fat 4g, fibre 0g, sugar 13g, salt 0.14 g

Recipe from Good Food magazine, November 2009.

Latest comments and suggestions

Results 1-20

Felicity Hey

02 November 2009

Felicity Hey commented on this recipe

These biscuits are absolutely delicious; short, crunchy yet rich. I wondered if the amount of white choc was a mistake, but it isn't. Finding the nuts was very difficult in my rural part of North Yorkshire, but I found a snackpack 150g of mixed dried cranberries and macadamia nuts at Morrisons in Skipton. The biscuits spread a bit more than in the photo. Baked them in the top oven of my Aga, with the cold tray in. Well worth the cost of ingredients, and don't even think of using margarine, the extra on butter is necessary for the flavour!

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uptospeed

18 November 2009

uptospeed commented on this recipe

Lovely biscuits. The recipe was more than enough for me to make a batch and freeze the rest and i have already taken out some and cooked from frozen. Great if friends are dropping in and for you to quickly pop in the oven.

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Julie

20 November 2009

Julie rated and commented on this recipe

The flavour of these biscuits is lovely - but it does not clearly explain what you do with the melted chocolate. I put the melted chocolate in the mixture but when the cookies were baking they spread too much and were quite flat. They did not look like the picture at all. any comments gratefully received. Julie

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Ruby

25 November 2009

Ruby rated and commented on this recipe

loved the biscuits, will be making them again. My daughter and husband could'nt stop eating them.

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josephine

25 November 2009

josephine commented on this recipe

i have not made the cookies yet ,but i am just wondering ,do you add the 140g of cooled choclate ,in with the butter eggs,vanilla and sugars?

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Mandy Lam

02 December 2009

Mandy Lam commented on this recipe

The way I read the recipe is you add the butter, eggs, sugars and vanilla to the 170g of melted (and cooled) chocolate. I am looking forward to making this recipe. Hopefully I'll be giving it 5 stars!

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shanni

16 December 2009

shanni rated and commented on this recipe

I made them with a lot lesser chocolate as i couldnt find enough at home, so i ended up using only about.. 120g of choc? (I was a bit doubtful of the amt of choc in it,anyway. 600grams seemed a bit too much with 275g of sugar. i didnt add any more sugar or anything, and it was still great! I also put only teaspoonfuls of batter each time, so it wasnt too big. :) But how do you keep them from becoming soft? besides putting them in an airtight container in the fridge, i realize that after taking them out of the fridge the cookie will soften after a short while.

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Ali

04 March 2010

Ali rated this recipe

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PamelaNZ

22 March 2010

PamelaNZ rated this recipe

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Danielle

06 April 2010

Danielle commented on this recipe

These cookies were absolutely AMAIZING!! I made them for Easter and everyone loved them. I will definately make them again. :)

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emmawilki

18 May 2010

emmawilki rated and commented on this recipe

I made these at Christmas and they were gorgeous. Tried them again but varied the ingredients a bit...dried cranberries and white choc still, but replaced macadamias with pistachios that I poked into the surface before baking. Also left out the cinnamon and just had vanilla. They were beautiful and the cranberries and pistachios looked like jewels. Will make them this way from now on as macadamias are so high in fat!

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NomNomNom

09 October 2010

NomNomNom rated and commented on this recipe

Just made this tonight with half the ingredients V. nice though was a bit sweet for me so will cut down chocolate/sugar with the next batch

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anouk

13 November 2010

anouk rated this recipe

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tifty

14 November 2010

tifty rated and commented on this recipe

Fab, froze the mixture and just baked as we needed- lovely!

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Laura

27 November 2010

Laura commented on this recipe

Made half the recipe, without the nuts, and reduced the chocolate to 200g after reading the comments. Looked lovely but still found them really sweet - I used confectioner's white chocolate not the Milky Bar type so maybe that's the problem. Next time, I'll use less chocolate and only use it for the chips on top and not melt and mix half into the batter. Maybe that will help. It's strange because I normally have a sweet tooth.

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Madzia.A

31 December 2010

Madzia.A rated this recipe

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lockheart

17 January 2011

lockheart rated and commented on this recipe

tasty, easy to make biscuits. love that you can open freeze and cook easily on demand at later date. used teaspoons, not tablespoons to dish out mix. not too sure about the cinnamon, think i'd leave it out next time. this time i also cut down the unbelieveable amount of chocolate... by around a half i think, but i'd use just 200g next time, half melted, and rest in chunks, would also increase the amount of cranberries. but thats all just personal preference! otherwise, recommended recipe.

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Julie's grub

02 February 2011

Julie's grub rated this recipe

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Top Cat

28 July 2011

Top Cat rated and commented on this recipe

Good flavour, but not crunchy enough for my liking

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sk22

16 August 2011

sk22 rated and commented on this recipe

I made these with a few changes and they are delicious. To start with I halved the recipe as I did not want to freeze any so used 85g of melted white chocolate . I left out the cinnamon and vanilla and only used about another 80g of chopped white choc for the chips. Very quick and easy to make.

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