These white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are soft-baked style with extra chewy centers. Melted butter maintains a delicious buttery flavor while an extra egg yolk adds chewiness. They’re absolutely PACKED with white chocolate and salted macadamia nuts.
Everything Old is New Again!
My website’s archives are filled with over 1,000 recipes. Some of my earlier recipes are total hidden gems, but there are others that I’ve felt needed some work. I’ve been working behind the scenes updating older recipes as I find necessary. Most notable updates: peanut butter cupcakes, monkey bread, and yellow cupcakes.
Today’s white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are part of this project. I craved a thicker cookie with softer, chewier centers and a distinct buttery flavor. There wasn’t much in this recipe that really needed to change, so I just made a couple minor tweaks.
They’re now perfect.
Video Tutorial
These are the BEST White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
And here’s why:
- Major chunks—lots of nuts and white chocolate
- Classic comforting flavors
- Extra buttery
- Soft-baked style
- Chewy centers
- Slightly crisp edges
- Easy to freeze
Re-Testing This Recipe
This recipe is a cross between my coconut macadamia nut cookies and my chewy chocolate chip cookies. Like the original recipe first published in 2012, I use melted butter instead of softened butter. I love using melted butter in cookies because it produces an extra buttery flavor as well as a chewier texture. However, it’s not as simple as swapping melted butter for softened butter. (Of course it’s not. It’s BAKING! So particular!)
You see, melted butter—a liquid—creates spread. If there isn’t enough flour to absorb the added liquid, the cookies will spread all over the baking sheet. On the other hand, if there’s excess flour, the cookies will taste dry. Finding the balance between too wet and too dry is a total roll of the dice! Speaking of dry ingredients, I add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch here. This ingredient adds a little extra softness. I don’t add cornstarch when making the coconut macadamia nut cookies because the coconut acts as a really soft dry ingredient, so cornstarch just isn’t necessary there.
The original recipe also used an extra egg yolk. I love this addition! See my chewy chocolate chip cookies if you’re curious about it. Basically, an extra egg yolk = extra richness and extra chew. Both good things.
Two final changes: I add a little more baking soda for additional volume because the original cookies typically over-spread. I also switch the amounts of sugar. Here we use an equal amount of granulated sugar and brown sugar. In addition to sweetening, brown sugar creates a soft and more flavorful cookie and granulated sugar creates spread. Balancing them helps produce a chewy, yet crispy edge cookie.
Best Macadamia Nuts to Use
I LOVE using salted dry-roasted macadamia nuts in white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. The roasted salty flavor pairs beautifully with the extra sweet white chocolate morsels—you won’t regret it!
3 Cookie Tips to Improve Your Next Batch
- Spoon & Level the Flour: The amount of flour makes or breaks a cookie recipe—literally. Spoon and level that flour or, better yet, weigh your flour.
- Chill the Cookie Dough: Chilling the cookie dough, especially since we’re using melted butter, is an imperative step in this recipe. The colder the dough, the less the cookies will over-spread into greasy puddles. You’ll have thicker, sturdier, and more solid cookies.
- Bake 1 Batch at a Time: You get the best possible results when the oven only concentrates on 1 batch at a time. If you need to bake more than one batch at a time, rotate the baking sheets from the top rack to bottom rack a couple times through the baking process to encourage even browning. And turn the sheets around as well. Ovens have hot spots!
Super-Chunk White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies
- Prep Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
- Yield: 30 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These white chocolate macadamia nut cookies are soft-baked style with extra chewy centers. They’re absolutely PACKED with white chocolate morsels and salted macadamia nuts. Chilling the cookie dough is imperative, so set aside at least 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons (265g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (12 Tbsp; 170g) unsalted butter, melted + slightly cooled
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 heaping cup (210g) white chocolate chips*
- 1 cup (120g) roughly chopped macadamia nuts*
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- Whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract together until combined. Pour into dry ingredients and mix everything together with a rubber spatula until completely combined. Fold in the white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. (You can use a mixer for this step if needed.)
- Cover and chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours and up to 4 days. If chilling for longer than 2 hours, allow to sit at room temperature for at least 20-30 minutes before rolling and baking because the dough will be quite hard.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Roll cookie dough into balls, about 1-1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie (I like to use this medium cookie scoop), and arrange 3 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12-13 minutes or until lightly browned on the sides. The centers will look soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 4. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Rubber Spatula | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- White Chocolate Chips: I usually use closer to 1 and 1/4 cups white chocolate chips, about 210g. For looks, you can press a few extra chips into the tops of the warm cookies when they come out of the oven.
- Macadamia Nuts: I used salted dry-roasted macadamia nuts. You can use unsalted, raw, and/or whichever macadamia nuts you love most. Salted dry-roasted adds incredible flavor though.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Loveeeee this recipe! I’ve made it before & they turned out perfect. I plan on making them again this weekend for part of my Christmas cookie assortment 🙂 thanks for sharing!!
I found these cookies to be delicious, however they did not spread out at all even when the dough became room temperature. Not sure what I did wrong here. I do prefer my cookies to be more chewy , not so cake like and soft.
Any advice?
Thanks
Hi Kolina, When cookies aren’t spreading, it usually means that there’s too much dry ingredient (flour) soaking up all the liquid. Make sure you are properly measuring your flour. When measuring flour, use the spoon & level method. Do not scoop the flour out of the container/bag. Doing so leaves you with excess flour in the cookie dough.
If you’re in the middle of baking a batch and the cookies still aren’t spreading, remove them from the oven, and use a spoon to slightly flatten them out before returning them to the oven.
This is a great recipe! These taste so good. For those who live at a higher elevation such as myself, I would not recommend using the butter melted. I did just room temperature softened butter. Other than that I made the recipe as stated.
I use a zip lock bag and lightly beat them with a hammer it works lol
What is the best way to chop macadamia nuts. When I use a knife they want to roll all over the place. When using a food processor doing short pulses i get small pieces, crumbs and whole pieces at the same time. I end up cutting them one at a time which is very time consuming.
Hi, i just made your white chocolate cookie but from the book. I notice that the recipe is different. But i thought the book is better. I reduce the amount of brown sugar to 135 gr and the white sugar to 35. Now after reading this, has a typo. Because the book said 50 gram white sugar.
If i want to reduce the sugar, what do i have to subtitute?
Thanks
Hi Jenna! The two recipes are different from each other. I’m glad you enjoyed the other version! You can slightly reduce the sugar, but I wouldn’t reduce it more than 4-5 Tablespoons. Sugar not only sweetens the cookies, it provides texture as well.
Hi, Sally thank you for replying. Was the white sugar is wrong amount in the book recipe? Because it’s only called for 50 gram granulated sugar. Not 150. With 2 tbsp less flour.
The book recipe is also lack of white chocolate.
They taste like butter
These are AMAZING! The best macadamia nut cookie I have ever had and thanks to you, I get to make them myself. It’s impossible to go wrong with you- every recipe I’ve baked is special and delicious!
I made these for the first time today and LOVED them. I mean they are just amazing. Unfortunately, my brother is highly allergic to nuts. Do you think following this recipe but replacing the nuts for crushed pretzels would work? Thanks!!
Very good!
My macadamia nuts weren’t salted, so I sprinkled some coarse sea salt on top before baking, loved the salty sweet combo.
I baked the first half after refrigerating for about 30 minutes, it was a “need cookies ASAP” situation. I have the other half of the batter resting in the fridge so I’ll compare how they bake. However, the ones that I baked after 30 minutes of refrigeration came out fine, I just took them from fridge to oven without letting them rest at room temp. So, if you just can’t wait the full 2 hours resting for these delicious cookies don’t let it deter you completely 😉
Can you make balls of dough and then chill or freeze to make one batch at a time and freeze some for later fresh cookies??
Hi Carol, Absolutely! You will still want to chill the dough before forming balls (otherwise it’s too soft to maintain its shape) but then you can keep the dough balls covered in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or in the freezer for longer. You can see the post How to Freeze Cookie Dough for even more details!
Thanks for this, Sally!
I’ve never done American style cookies before, and these turned out to be really easy.
Now, I’ve replaced the granulated sugar with erythritol and the brown sugar with coconut blossom sugar. I’ve also used chopped 70% dark chocolate buttons and dried cranberries instead of white chocolate. First batch is busy cooling on a rack, and so far, they’re looking good! Still a tad sweeter than I’m used to, but I’m happy with the result.
Next time, I’ll probably just leave out the chocolate altogether for some cranberry and macadamia goodness. Sound sensible? Or do you have another recipe I ought to be looking at instead?
Oo! The second batch has just come out of the oven, and they’re beautiful! Now to figure out why the first ones spread so much (exactly the same batch of cookie dough, baked on the same day, in the same oven…). I’ve got an inkling, but it’s still odd. 🙂
Hi Amy, Thank you for trying this recipe! You may find this post helpful to troubleshoot cookies that spread: 10 Guaranteed Tips to Prevent Cookies from Spreading.
Well I always wondered why my cookies came out looking like silver dollar pancakes, but squares, because I had to chop them up after baking, this recipe is fab, and taught me something. Believe me, I was like “two hours up to days”, I wanted this for kids lunches in the morning. It worked out timing wise, but definitely a piece of the puzzle I’ve been missing
Hey Sally. I was wondering if I wanted to use 3 tablespoons of dough per cookie, what temperature would I need for the oven, and how long would it take?
Hi Kamryn, This recipe is similar to this chocolate chip cookies recipe. That recipe uses 3 TBS of dough to make larger cookies and are baked at a slightly lower temperature (325°F (163°C)) so they can bake more evenly since they are so large. You can follow those baking directions.
Hey Sally! I finally made these cookies today, and followed the recipe exactly. When I baked them, though, they didn’t spread almost at all. The last couple minutes, I actually had to flatten them a bit with a fork. Not a real big deal. They just weren’t the prettiest cookies I’ve ever made. The flavor, of course, was wonderful though! Any idea why they wouldn’t spread at all?
Thanks, as always, for the great recipes!
Hi Joe, When cookies aren’t spreading, it usually means that there’s too much dry ingredient (flour) soaking up all the liquid. Make sure when measuring flour to use the spoon & level method. Do not scoop the flour out of the container/bag. Doing so leaves you with excess flour in the cookie dough.
For more details and tips you can visit the post 5 Cookie Baking Tips to Improve Your Next Batch. I hope this helps!
Thanks for the response! That’s kind of what I figured happened. I scooped and leveled, but maybe that extra 2 T of flour is what set me over the edge a bit. I’ll keep it in mind for the next batch!
I am not a big fan of cookie but my sister in law follows your recipe and the cookies come out the best that I ever had! I’m kind of addicted to it now. Thank you Sally!
I used browned butter, added 54 g (a little less than half cup) dried cranberries, and reduced the white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts by 25 g each. Didn’t have cornstarch, so substituted arrowroot powder.
While they baked, they didn’t spread, so I used your tip of shaping them with a spoon mid-baking.
They are outrageously good!!
Thank you for the marvelous recipes and heaps of helpful information!
I wanted to love these cookies but after following the recipe to the letter, they’ve baked into sad, greasy, pancake-flat puddles that were a total waste of the ingredients that went into them. I feel like I would have had to add a ton more flour to get them to even hold any shape at all. They spread so much and so quickly that the edges were nearly burnt before the middles got even barely firm. They taste great, but I sure won’t be sharing them with the friend I was baking them for.
Hi Jamie, Thank you for trying this recipe. We are glad you enjoyed the taste. If you decide to try again, take a look at this post to help troubleshoot: 10 Guaranteed Tips to Prevent Cookies from Spreading.
i’ve made chocolate chip cookies with a recipe similar to these and NEVER had to chill them and they turn out perfect. If you add a little extra flour they won’t spread and you don’t need to chill.
The best cookies EVER!!!! Wow, the inside is sort and chewy and the outside is caramelized and crispy. Thank you SO much for the recipe Sally!
Cookies were way too sweet. I really enjoyed the chewy chocolate chip recipe and decided to try this one, but it came out really sweet. I only realized afterwards that this one had more sugar in it compared to the chewy chocolate chip recipe. Might just stick with that one instead.
These cookies were AMAZING! I made a gluten-free batch for a friend and a batch for myself and YUM! The friend brought them to work and told everyone she made them They were packed with flavor and came out crispy on the edges and soft in the centers. 10 out of 10 would make again.
Hi, I am wondering why the oven temp is different from the temp for the choc chip cookies with a very similar recipe? Thanks!!
Hi Melissa, this recipe is similar to my chocolate chip cookies recipe. That recipe, however, makes larger cookies. I bake those at a slightly lower temperature so they can bake more evenly since they are so large. I hope this helps clear up the difference. Thanks for asking!
Hello! I’m making this for a friend of mine who wants me to use 90% dark chocolate instead of white. Is the dough already sweet enough to handle that or should I adjust the sugar levels?
Hi Cas, If your friend enjoys eating that type of chocolate then they will enjoy it in this cookie recipe! Simply replace the same amount of white chocolate chips with dark chocolate chips/chunks. Enjoy!
This is an amazing recipe as it has given me 100% success with all batches of cookies I have made! My family likes our cookies a little less sweet so I have tried batches where I reduce the white and brown sugar to only 100g and it has been fine! I ever tried adding a tablespoon of matcha powder before too – for those who enjoy the matcha flavour. Thank you SO MUCH for sharing this recipe!
Is it necessary to refrigerate the dough for 2 hours?
I think it’s better to refrigerate to allow the butter to harden a little to avoid overspread in your cookies.
OMG. These are SUPER GOOD! Thanks for sharing the recipe! I changed very slightly by decreasing flour by 2 tbsp and using room temperature butter (it was about 75 degrees in my condo) – chilled for 20 minutes and they came out amazing!!
Hi! About the flour its says 2 cups and 2 table spoon and in brackets it says (265g). The measuring cup I’m using says 1 cup is 250g so doesn’t this mean I should be using 1 cup and 2 table spoons to get 265g total?
Hi Maddie! 1 cup of all-purpose flour weighs about 125g. 2 cups plus 2 Tablespoons weighs around 265g. Regardless of what your cup measures, I recommend using 265g.
I’ve made these cookies so many times, and they’re always a hit! I’ve been trying to find an ube cookie recipe, but they’re all crinkle cookie recipes. Since I absolutely love the base of this cookie, would it work to use this mix and just add ube extract? I don’t know too much about the extract and how it would effect a cookie, but I’m assuming it’s like any other flavored extract?
Hi Trish, We are so happy you enjoy this cookie recipe! We haven’t tested this with ube extract but you can certainly try. You can start by using half vanilla and half ube extract. Let us know if you try it!
The texture of these cookies was amazing, even when using only 1/2 cup each brown and white sugar. Pairing the salted macadamia nuts with the sweet white chocolate is brilliant—it adds an incredible depth of flavour!
Hi Sally! I just started baking and the first recipe I tried was this one! I read about how the best cookies would be slightly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside but, my son loves crispy cookies so how would I alter the recipe to make the cookies crispy?
Hi Ashley, You can chill the dough for slightly less time (closer to 2 hours than overnight) and also add an extra minute to the bake time for crispier cookies. I hope your son enjoys them!
Thanks Sally! I made these and my boyfriend said they are the best cookies he’s ever had. Including from the shops, bakeries, his mum (!) and cafes.
I’m a big fan of your recipes, always finding they are exactly right for my tastes and easy to sub or tweak. I especially like that you also include gram measurements saving me from spending half the time googling conversions!