White Chocolate Chip Cookies with Macadamias

These are bakery-style cookies with serious heft. A ⅓-cup scoop of dough per cookie means thick, substantial rounds that stay soft in the center while the edges go golden and crispy. The brown sugar and white sugar combo gives you that balance of chew and crunch.

Chopped white chocolate chunks melt into creamy pockets throughout the cookie, while halved macadamia nuts add buttery crunch in every bite. The richness is the whole point here. This isn’t a cookie that pretends to be light.

Creaming the butter and sugars until fluffy introduces air that keeps the cookies from turning dense. But once the flour goes in, stop mixing. Overworking the dough after adding flour develops gluten and makes the cookies tough instead of tender.

Pro Tips

• Use real white chocolate (with cocoa butter), not white baking chips. Chips contain palm oil and waxy stabilizers that don’t melt the same way.
• Chill the dough for 30 minutes if it feels too soft to scoop. Cold dough spreads less in the oven and gives you thicker cookies.
• Cool on the baking sheet for the full 3 minutes before transferring. The cookies are fragile when hot and will break apart if moved too soon.
• These are big cookies. Space them a full 2 inches apart or they’ll merge into one giant cookie sheet.

Variations

• Dark and white: Add a handful of dark chocolate chips alongside the white chocolate for a two-tone flavor contrast.
• Salted macadamia: Sprinkle flaky sea salt on top of each cookie right after they come out of the oven.