Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Macadamia Cookies

I don't know about you but two of my very favorite things year round are macadamia nuts and chocolate.  They can be together or separate.  They are just pretty amazing, so when I thought of trying out some more cookies with browned butter....I said, why not add two of my favorite things in it?!  And well, you can see how they turned out!  These are another perfect fall cookie too!  They are slightly salty, slightly chewy, slightly crunchy and a whole lot of delicious!

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Macadamia Cookies
1-3/4 sticks of unsalted butter
1 T. vanilla
2 large eggs

2-1/3 cup flour

1/2 cup white sugar (or pure cane sugar)
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. salt
1 cup coarsely chopped (salted) macadamia nuts
1-1/2 (or 2) cups chocolate chips (I highly recommend semi-sweet chips but I suppose you could use milk or white chocolate....)

Important Note:  These instructions are a little out of order for a regular cookie but this is what I found works best with the browned butter types.  So I highly recommend doing it in this order AND having the dough chill in the fridge for at least an hour before baking.

1.  Place the butter (just two tablespoons less than two whole sticks) in a stainless steel saucepan.  It's best not to use a nonstick or dark pan because you need to be able to see when it changes color.  Melt the butter on high for about 2 minutes.  Turn it down to medium high (7-8) and while stirring or swirling watch it change to a dark caramel color.  It takes about 3-5 additional minutes after it has melted.  Once it is browned, pour it into a large heat safe glass or other mixing bowl.  Set aside.
2.  In a separate large mixing bowl combine flour, sugars, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt.
3.  Stir the butter and mix in vanilla and eggs until well combined.
4.  Add the butter mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Then add the macadamias and chocolate chips and again just stir until combined.  It will be a dry or tough dough.  It will bake up fine, so don't add anything more! :)
5.  Now I found it really easy to just go ahead and make into the balls for baking at this point and then chill it and be able to just plop on the baking sheets easily.  You could chill it and then form the balls too.  Because the dough is tougher/drier it is likely MUCH easier to do it before it is chilled though and you'll have to get your hands dirty.  Just a warning.  But it's totally worth it.

So I called them dough balls but I made more like discs...They are about 1.5" x .5"
and that worked well for my oven.  So you can do whatever may work for yours. 

6.  Chill, from 1-24 hours.
7.  Preheat oven to 350degrees.
8.  Once the oven is preheated, place chilled cookie balls on a cookie sheet (preferably not an insulated one) and bake for 9 minutes.  Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and let cookies cool on pan for 5 minutes before removing to cooling rack.  This extra time on the sheet will ensure they finish cooking and make them to die for. ;)  (If you bake them like this, they should be slightly chewy and very delicious with a slight crunch.  Every oven is different so you may need to adjust accordingly!)

This is about what color they will be once you remove them from the cookie sheet.

9. Repeat step 8 until the dough is gone, or you could freeze remaining dough balls until you want to bake more.

Makes about 3.5 dozen (or 40) cookies.

These are the perfect mix of savory and sweet just in time for November!