Macadamia Butter Cookies with Dried Cranberries

Yum! I was looking for a dessert recipe that included dried cranberries as one of the ingredients. I specifically chose this recipe because it included macadamia nuts. Combining the rich creamy flavor of the macadamia nuts with the tartness of the dried cranberries these cookies turned out to be fantastic!

 

Recipe:

2/3 cup macadamia nuts

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ cup sweetened dried cranberries, chopped

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place nuts in a food processor; process until smooth (about 2 minutes), scraping sides of bowl once. Combine macadamia butter, ½ cup granulated sugar, and brown sugar in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed. Add vanilla and egg; beat well.
3. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and ground nutmeg, stirring with a whisk. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture; beat at low speed just until combined (mixture will be very thick). Stir in chopped cranberries. Chill 10 minutes.
4. Divide chilled dough into 30 equal portions; roll each portion into a ball. Place 1 tablespoon granulated sugar in a small bowl. Lightly press each ball into sugar; place each ball, sugar side up, on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
5. Gently press the top of each cookie with a fork. Dip the fork with water; gently press the top of each cookie again to form a crisscross pattern. Place 15 cookies on each of 2 baking sheets.
6. Bake cookies, 1 baking sheet at a time, at 375 degrees for 9 minutes or until golden. Remove cookies from pan; cool on a wire rack. Repeat procedure with remaining cookies.

A couple notes:

The dough was more crumbly than the recipe said it would be which made it harder to form into small balls. Next time I may tweak the recipe a bit to use less flour.

Instead of dividing the dough into 30 portions, I divided it into 20 portions. This made the cookies a bit bigger. They took about 11 minutes in the oven to turn golden brown.

Enjoy!