Macadamia – Black Currant Sugar Cookies

 Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ cups          All-purpose flour
• 1 tsp                Baking powder
• ½ tsp               Baking soda
• ½ tsp               Salt
• 1 ½ cup            Sugar (and more for rolling dough)
• 2 oz                 Cream cheese
• 11 Tbsp            Unsalted butter, melted and still warm
• 1 large             Egg
• 2 Tbsp             Milk
• 6 beans            Vanilla beans, split and scraped
• ½ tsp               Lemon zest
• ½ cup              Macadamia nuts, coarsely ground
• 8 oz                 Dried black currants

 

• Directions:Preheat oven to 350, line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Melt butter, add sugar, cream cheese, and lemon zest, mix thoroughly. Grind macadamia nuts with vanilla beans (vanilla extract won’t give good flavor for this!), then add to the butter, as well as adding egg and milk. Stir in the dried black currants, mixing just enough to distribute the currants into the dough. Add dough to the flour mix. Use a teaspoon of dough per cookie, form into a ball, roll in sugar until coated, then flatten onto the parchment paper. Bake until edges turn slightly brown (10-15 minutes), remove, let cool and serve.