Macadamia Nut Shortbread

5 from 2 votes

Macadamia Nut Shortbread is melt in your mouth delicious! These cookies have a rich, buttery flavor and firm crisp texture.

Prep Time10

Cook Time15

Total Time25

Course: cookies

Cuisine: Western

Keyword: macadamia nut shortbread, macadamia shortbread

Servings:

Calories: 231kcal

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

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

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.