Macadamia Nut Shortbread is melt in your mouth delicious! Easy to make by combining simple ingredients and folding in robust macadamia nuts. These cookies have a rich, buttery flavor and firm crisp texture. Needing only minimal effort they are an excellent choice to delivering homemade satisfaction in cookie form!
Recipes like the White Chocolate Macadamia Blondies and Macadamia Caramel Slice embrace cooking with this delicious and sturdy nut. The Mini Shortbread Cookies offers a non nut version.
The Oreo Blondies, Caramel Cheesecake Brownies, Raspberry White Chocolate Blondies and the Baileys Cheesecake Brownies are other fun ways to get your bake on.
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🤍 Macadamia Nut Shortbread
I have summarised everything that you will come to know and love (LOVE ❤) about the recipe in the points below:
- Homemade: makes everything taste better right! There is such a different quality in homemade cookies versus store bought ones. They just have that extra special touch.
- Quick: the prep in bringing the cookie dough together will take you around 10 minutes and then it is a fast 15 minute cook time. This makes the shortbread a great choice if you need a sweet treat stat.
- Pantry staples: other than the macadamia nuts the rest of the ingredients are pantry staples that you are likely to have on hand already. If you purchase the nuts in advance and keep them in the cupboard you can whip the shortbread up anytime you need.
🥗 Ingredients
The photo below is to show you everything you need to make the macadamia shortbread recipe. Please refer to the printable recipe card for specific ingredient measurements as well as detailed instructions.
As you can see the recipe calls for:
- Vanilla: this gives the macadamia shortbread a nutty flavor so it is the perfect compliment to the nuts used.
- Salt: we use salt as I recommend using unsalted butter. This way we can control exactly how much salt goes into the shortbread.
- Butter: unsalted, see above.
- Macadamia nuts: I like to use 'roasted and salted' macadamia nuts for the best texture and flavor. I find macadamia nuts that are in the cooking aisle a bit too plain and boring to use when making cookies.
- Icing sugar.
- Plain flour.
😉 Variations
Here are my sub ins and outs that you might be thinking about as you read the post and I will tell you if I think they will work or why they won't:
- Other nuts: crushed pistachios, almonds or pecans are great choices for an alternative nut.
- Salted butter: if you only have salted butter and want to use that then I recommend leaving out the 'salt' as a seperate ingredient.
- Chocolate: if you want to add chocolate to the cookies you can let them cool and then decorate them with a touch of melted chocolate.
👩🍳 How to Make Macadamia Nut Shortbread
To make the macadamia nut shortbread we start by creaming the butter using electric beaters. You will need a large mixing bowl to begin.
- Cream the butter and vanilla (Photo 1)
- Add the icing sugar (Photo 2)
- Add the flour in batches (Photo 3)
- Mix till combined (Photo 4)
🍳 Macadamia Shortbread Cookies
Next add the macadamia nuts and stir to gently fold them into the batter.
Once done sprinkle a little bit of flour onto a clean, dry bench top and knead the dough for 1-2 minutes.
- Add the macadamia nuts (Photo 5)
- Tip batter out (Photo 6)
- Knead the batter (Photo 7)
- Roll out flat (Photo 8)
Once the dough is consistently combined use a rolling pin to roll it out flat. Then take a cookie cutter and make cuts into the dough like shown in the photos below.
- Rotate horizontally (Photo 9)
- Cut with cookie cutter (Photo 10)
- Or roll in parchment paper (Photo 11)
- Oven bake (Photo 12)
If you don't have a cookie cutter don't despair. There is another technique you can try which is seen in the photos above. Roll the shortbread dough into a log and cover in parchment paper. Put in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up, then remove, discard the paper and slice with a knife.
Once done, place the shortbread cookies onto a silicon baking mat and oven bake for 12- 15 minutes.
When the cook time is up, use oven mitts to remove the baking tray and place it on a heatproof surface.
Leave the cookies as is for a while. They will firm up as they cool down.
Once cool, you can transfer them to a wire rack.
🍽 Serving Suggestions
Serving your macadamia shortbread will be the most fun part! We can keep it really simple and pop it on the side of a cup of tea or coffee and call it a day!
👍 How to Guide
How to Store
Let the shortbread cool on the wire rack. Then transfer them to a sealed airtight container.
How to Freeze
Or you can wrap the shortbread cookies in cling wrap and place in a zip lock bag and freeze them. They can be frozen for up to 3 months.
💡 Tasty Tips
Here are my top tips and tricks that I want to share with you so that you master the recipe from the get go:
- Butter: the butter will be easiest to cream if it is at room temperature to begin with. So grab it out of the fridge and set it on the bench for a little bit before you begin working with it.
- Method: if you don't have a set of electric beaters you can use your food processor to make this shortbread instead. Follow the steps as they are but use the blades of the food processor as the 'beaters' to bring the batter together.
- Cookie size: I like to use a large cookie cutter which then makes 20 biscuits. You can also use a smaller one to make 40 smaller size biscuits if you wish to.
🤓 Macadamia Nut Shortbread FAQ's
Butter, sugar and flour are the most commonly used ingredients to make shortbread. However, you will see a wide variety of different options that may use other ingredients such as rice flour.
Plain flour is quite commonly used as the base flour in shortbread.
Either granulated sugar or powdered sugar can be used for shortbread. The difference is in the texture. Use granulated sugar for a crispier shortbread and powdered sugar for a more tender soft shortbread crumb.
😍 More Easy Bake Or No Bake Recipes
Spending a little bit of time baking or no baking can be so therapeutic! If this is your kindof therapy then I have some more ideas that might be right up your alley.
- More cookies: Smarties Cookies, Anzac Biscuits, Mars Bar Cookies, Snickers Cookies, Pistachio Biscuits.
- Blondies recipes: Birthday Cake Blondies, Butter Pecan Blondies, M And M Blondies, Apple Cinnamon Blondies.
- Chocolate recipes: Malteser Fudge, Snickers Fudge, Mint Aero Fudge, Microwave Chocolate Fudge.
- Dessert recipes: Microwave Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding, Baileys Pudding.
It is time to get our shortbread on my friend! You can also find all of my baking recipes or chocolate recipes in the one spot.
Adrianne
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📖 Recipe
Macadamia Nut Shortbread
Ingredients
- 250 grams/ 2 sticks and 2 tablespoons butter unsalted at room temperature, Note 1
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup icing sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt Note 2
- 2 cups plain flour no need to sift
- 1 ½ cups macadamia nuts roughly chopped, Note 3
Instructions
- Preheat the oven: preheat the oven to 160°C / 320°F / Gas Mark 3.
- Cream butter: add the butter and vanilla to a large mixing bowl and then use electric beaters to cream so it is soft and fluffy.
- Sugar and salt: next add the icing sugar and salt mix it in thoroughly.
- Flour: now pour half of the flour in and mix that into the shortbread. Once combined add the remaining flour and repeat to mix it in.
- Macadamia nuts: now add the macadamia nuts to the shortbread and stir to gently fold them in.
- Knead: sprinkle a little flour over your bench top then tip the shortbread out onto the counter. Use your hands to knead the dough for 1-2 minutes until it is consistently combined. Now use a rolling pin to roll the shortbread into one flat layer.
- Cookie cutter: use a cookie cutter to cut the shortbread into cookies then transfer the raw cookies to a silicon mat on a baking tray. Repeat until all of the dough is cut into cookies.
- Oven bake: place the baking tray into the preheated oven on the middle shelf. Bake the shortbread for 12-15 minutes. Once the cook time is up use a pair of oven mitts to remove the baking tray and set it on a heatproof surface.
- Cool: initially leave the cooked shortbread on the baking tray to cool. The cookies will firm up as their temperature drops. After about 15 minutes you can gently transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling. Note 4
Video
Notes
- Note 1 - Butter: my preference is to use unsalted butter. This way we can control how much salt goes into the recipe. If however, you only have unsalted butter you can use this and then see my point below about omitting the separate 'salt' as an ingredient. A standard block of butter in Australia is 250 grams. A stick of butter in the USA is 113 grams. So you can use 2 sticks which will give you 226 grams or 2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons butter to be more precise.
- Note 2 - Salt: if using salted butter, then omit this extra ingredient.
- Note 3 - Macadamia nuts: I like to use roasted, salted macadamia nuts. I find that these are firmer with more flavor than the macadamia nuts that are in the cooking aisle. I roughly chop them to have mainly halves or you can use the food processor to chop them a bit finer. We do however, want to still have the separate nut texture visible and available in the cookies as opposed to them being fully processed into a crumb.
- Note 4 - Cook time: in my oven these macadamia shortbread take 15 minutes to cook. They take on a little color but not a lot during this time. If pushed gently on the top they are still soft to the touch but they firm up as they cool down.
- Cookie cutter: the cookie cutter I use for the recipe is a round 7cm or approx 2.5 inch size. This makes 20 uniform cookies. You can however, use a smaller cookie cutter if you want to make more cookies.
Katie says
We are so going to try these!!
Adrianne Jamieson says
Thanks Katie! Enjoy. 😊