Grandma Ikeda's Chocolate Mac Nut Cookies

These are Grandma Ikeda's signature cookies. I tend to make it smaller than she does because I must be more pake or something, haha!

Ingredients:

3 sticks butter, at room temperature

1 cup white sugar

3 cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 cup macadamia nuts, toasted and cooled

1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Cream butter with sugar then slowly add the flour and baking soda. The dough will be a little coarse. Hand mix the mac nuts and chocolate chips, then make balls of cookie dough. 

Place dough on cookie sheets with parchment paper and flatten the dough a little. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool the cookies and store in an air tight container with wax paper between layers.

Notes:

The key to this is not to panic because the dough will seem very course and dusty. I have small hands but they are nice and warm which is perfect for pushing the butter together. When making the balls just squeeze until the butter is forced to hold the ball together. I keep the mac nuts very course and there is a lot of chocolate chips in here so just keep pushing the ingredients into the ball. 

I use a 3/4 sheet pan with parchment  and that should fit 12 medium balls. When they get flattened they should not touch.  The trick here is patience. Make one pan at 30 minutes. Clean up and lay out the baking racks. Put extra dough in refrigerator. With about 8 minutes until the first batch is done, take the dough out and form the next 12. 

When the first batch is ready, put it on a rack (still on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes). Then transfer to a rack. If you do that earlier, the cookie will sometimes just crumble through the rack. 

The key is patience and finding your rhythm.