For the first six months of our marriage Mr Firehouse worked FIFO. He would fly into Perth early on a Monday and stay a week, sometimes two, before flying back on a Friday. We had a bunch of lovely friends in Perth who took great care of him. Inviting him over, taking him out and generally keeping him entertained.

I was still getting the hang of the wife thing, so I would attempt to make baked goods to ship over with him. Unfortunately for them, I was still figuring out how to use our brand new oven. If it came with an instruction manual, I never saw it. Instead, I was faced with multiple symbols on a dial to denote baking, fan baking, grilling and the only one I could confirm for certain, light.

It really was hit and miss, I made  mini cheesecakes once, turned the dials with reckless abandon and the cheesecakes took about one and half hours to cook. Thankfully, our guests were patient, and didn’t mind the wait.

One night before a Monday flight, I decided to make some white chocolate and macadamia cookies. I had a recipe that I’d made successfully while at my parents and I had all the requisite ingredients. I couldn’t see anything going wrong. The batter was fine, my trusty Breville Mixmaster did all the hard work. I dutifully placed tablespoons full on the tray and whacked them in the oven. Fifteen minutes later I pulled then out and I was confronted with a goopy mess, the cookies had melted but not baked. The tops browned but the bottoms still soft and uncooked. I tried a second tray, same deal. AHHHH!

Mr Firehouse saw my distress and did what he did best, he consulted technology. He checked on the interweb and found a manual to decipher the oven markings. Turns out, up until that point, I’d been grilling my food.

We managed to salvage quite a few cookies from that disastrous run and the recipe still stands, or at least its 100th iteration maybe.

 

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• ¹⁄₂ cup caster sugar
• 1 cup butter softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped macadamia nuts
• 200 g white chocolate chips

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In medium bowl combine flour, soda and salt. Mix well, set aside.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, cream the butter and sugars together. Since these are cookies, they don’t need a lot of air, you want a grainy paste. Once they’ve reached that consistency add the eggs, one at a time, and vanilla, and beat at medium speed until fully combined.

Add the flour mixture and mix until combined. Finally add the nuts and chocolate and mix until they are evenly distributed.

Drop tablespoons dollops of the mixture onto baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges begin to brown. Move immediately to cooling rack.