July 1, 1010

Cranberry Macadamia Chippers

Whatever you do, DO NOT Make these cookies! Okay, if you do, purchasing Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred should be prerequisite. That is the only way you will work off the over-eating of these marvelous cookies!

My kitchen ended up as I remember leaving my mothers kitchen at about 14 years old. From time to time, (weekly really) while my mother was still at work, I would scrounge through her kitchen looking for something sweet after school. She had this policy, she would shop for our lunches and food for the week and buy little snacks like Twinkies or Ding Dong’s (actually she bought the generic brands) and she would say “When they’re gone, they’re gone!” meaning, if we ate them all before the next shopping day she was not buying more. Well, they were gone quite often.

I would then get out the ingredients! This could get rather messy, especially with a younger brother and sister running around trying to grab hand-fulls of dough as it was being made. I always made sure the kitchen was “spotless” afterward. As you can imagine a “spotless” kitchen for a 14 year old is quite different than say for a mother of four. Never failing, she would come home and her shoes would “crunch” as she walked in from work. Sugar grains left on the floor! Her worst nightmare! She absolutely loathed the sound of it.

 

 

That is what the aftermath of these cookies reminded me of. That and the fact that they were good enough to work well as a bribe for my brother and sister. Bribes were necessary to keep them from spilling my 14 year old girlie “secrets” from my mother.(bribes of bakery items were quite popular those days!)

 

Cranberry Macadamia Chippers

1 stick organic butter
1/2 cup organic brown sugar
1/2 cup organic sugar
1/4 cup mashed organic banana
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups King Arthur all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup macadamia nuts, chopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped
1/2 cup white chocolate chips (I used Guittard Choc-Au-Lait Vanilla milk chips)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream butter and sugars in mixer. Add vanilla and banana. Mix well.Combine flour salt and baking soda in separate bowl and then add to creamed mixture. Mix until combined. Add nuts, cranberries and white chocolate chips and mix together by hand with wooden spoon.
Place teaspoonfuls onto silpat or parchment paper on a baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes.

Very simple, very, very good!Posted 1st July 2010 by Chantel Beauregard

About the Author: Chantel Beauregard

I am a Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner, Nutritionist, Clinical Herbalist, Certified Nutrition Coach and a self proclaimed Culinary Archeologist. I studied Nutrition Science at Stanford University. Growing up, my friends always said our kitchen smelled like syrup. I of course interpreted this as a good thing, and it was. I enjoyed the smell of my Mom’s kitchen. To me it was a mixture of onions, garlic (two of my favorites) fenugreek, the sweetness of saffron and rosewater. Exotic spices from Iran were always in the house. Strange looking vegetables or fruits like artichokes and pomegranates. I grew up with “Persian influence” my mother would say. My Grandmothers kitchen was different. It either smelled of her famous chocolate cherry cake, KFC, or canning tomatoes. All of which smelled good to me. If we were visiting on a day it smelled of chocolate cake you could guarantee a peek at Grandpa through the kitchen window sneaking a second serving of chocolate cherry cake as we pulled out of the driveway to head home. One of my fondest memories. Most of the memories I have growing up include food. Very good food. And I think food should do just that. Take you somewhere, remind you of something wonderful, transport you to another time when all you had to do was pick up the fork and enjoy it! Don’t get me wrong choosing the ingredients and preparing what is on that fork is fun too! (Ever go foraging for watercress in a mountain creek?) But for those who are eating it, no other thoughts should be in their mind, other than the places that fork is about to take them. Here at Culinary Archeology I emphasize healthful eating personalized to YOUR genetics, design, lifestyle, environment, and health concerns. I help you build the confidence and skills to eat, cook and bake nutritiously intuitive, with purpose and creativity. My meal plans offer effective strategies and tools to improve health, including weekly food and shopping schedules, healthful recipes, and recommendations about cooking and food storage methods, as well as steps to achieve mindful eating, making food choices easier and fun, every day. I became a Certified 3x4 Practitioner because I know that there is no single right diet that applies to all of us. We have different genetic backgrounds, different preferences, and different lives. And until you get your nutrition right, nothing is going to change. By changing your diet , you can change your entire physiology. I am here to teach strategies and give tools to find out what is right for each person, individually.