Whole Wheat Macadamia Nuts Chocolate Chip Cookies

Whole Wheat Macadamia Nuts Chocolate Chip Cookies

Macadamia nuts add a perfect flavor to the chocolate chip cookies!! A healthy bake using whole wheat flour and jaggery powder!!

Presenting my third recipe under “My Julie & Julia Project” for this year. For those who don’t know, I have started this project under which I will be posting 100 recipes from my kitchen by the end of the year 2019. This is the Recipe #3. Here is the link to “My Julie & Julia Project” post:

Julie & Julia – Starting my journey

We are really fond of having cookies/biscotti/rusk, something to snack on, to go along with our tea during our morning and evening tea time. I have baked chocolate, oats, almond cookies in the past, but baking with this nut, macadamia, was my first time.

Macadamia nuts are also called Hawaii Nuts, but these are actually native to Australia. These nuts are sweet and full of flavor, but most importantly, they are the powerhouse of nutrition.

The health benefits of these nuts are numerous. These nuts are a rich source of monounsaturated fatty acids, which help in lowering the bad cholesterol and increasing good cholesterol levels in blood, which are linked to decreasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Macadamia nuts provide a good amount of energy, dietary fiber, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants. All in all, these nuts are packed with lots of health benefits.

I have been trying to reduce the use of all purpose flour from my baking experiments, and have been using whole wheat flour through my recipes. Though I occasionally love to use all purpose flour for baking breads, as I love the texture of the bread if prepared with all purpose flour. This recipe calls for using whole wheat flour in the macadamia cookies. I was a little skeptical at first, but the taste and texture with whole wheat is a winner as well, just like with all purpose flour.

I have not chopped the macadamia nuts, and have used it as I got from the bag, but if you plan to bake smaller cookies, you can chop them to as little a size you want. Even the chocolate chips I used are big in size. Well, I loved baking the cookies bigger, with two tablespoons full of batter for each cookie. So, the bigger nuts and chips worked for me.

I baked the cookies in two batches, and got around 23 cookies in all, thanks to the size of each cookie. Do make smaller ones, as per your preference, you might get double the number of cookies that I got.

Also, cranberries pair well with macadamia nuts. I will try using them in my next batch of macadamia cookies that I bake. Those who are fond of cranberries, do try adding some dried cranberries to the recipe. You can use half-n-half of chocolate chips and cranberries, or maybe even leave the chocolate chips in the recipe and just use cranberries, as per your preference.

The cookies were baked to perfection, just how I like them. Crusty outside, and soft and chewy on the inside. Without further taking more time, I will take you guys straight to the recipe. Happy baking!!

And if you like this recipe, you can also try one of these recipes which use chocolate chip cookies as well:

• Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies – With Whole Wheat Flour
• Whole Wheat And Chickpea Flour (Besan) Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Eggless Butter-less Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies – With Whole Wheat Flour (Vegan)
• Whole Wheat Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Nutella Stuffed Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Raspberry Chocolate Chip Whole Wheat Cookies

Method (Step-by-step with pictures)

• Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Meanwhile, mix the butter and the jaggery powder till the jaggery powder is completely blended with the butter.
  

• Add in the eggs to this mixture and keep stirring till all the ingredients are uniformly mixed.

• Now add vanilla essence to the above mixture. The wet ingredients mixture is now ready.

• For the dry ingredients, mix in whole wheat flour, baking soda and salt to the wet mixture. Finally add the macadamia nuts and chocolate chips to the mixture and give it a stir. I have also added milk in this step since I felt the mixture was too dry.

• Line a baking sheet with ungreased cookie sheet. Drop the batter on to the cookie sheet spoon by spoon and flatten using the fingers, keeping 1-2 inches space between each cookie. Since I have baked bigger cookies, I used two tablespoons of batter for each cookie (I baked the entire batter in two batches).
  

• Once the oven is preheated, bake the cookies in the oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven, and allow them to cool for 2 minutes.

The macadamia nut cookies are now ready to be stored in an air-tight container or enjoy them just out of the oven!!