Sausalito Cookies

100. This is my 100th cookie recipe on this blog. So I knew it had to be a good one. After about 200 sticks of butter, 300 cups of sugar, 250 eggs, here we are. What a sweet sweet ride it’s been. 100 down, endless cookie possibilities to go. I recently took an amazing trip to California with my friend Sarah to drink wine country dry of all its vino. I was looking around every corner (and in many bottles) for cookie inspiration. And I found it in downtown Sausalito . A little town right before you hit the golden gate bridge where we had a nice breakfast last Saturday morning. I have a friend who is a cookie marketing manager at Pepperidge Farm (why is this not my job??) and I have a list of Pepperidge Farm cookies that I want to bake on my own. They have a Sausalito cookie that it is a delicious combination of chocolate chunks and macadamia nuts. We also visited the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, so I opted to use the high-quality chocolate in this cookie. You can definitely taste the difference.

For the record, I landed on Monday at 4:40 pm. Was home by 5:20 pm. Went to the grocery store and was back by 6pm. Went for a run, and then was baking cookies by 7pm. I think Colleen thought I was insane (I probably am) but I am committed to my cookie fans at work and know they needed their sugar fix Tuesday morning.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 3/4 cup of granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups macadamia nuts, toasted
• Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 ounces)
• Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate bar, chopped coarsely

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Toast macadamia nuts and set aside to cool. I usually just spread the nuts out on a parchment lined baking sheet and put them in the oven, and move them every few minutes with a spatula until they smell nutty and taste good.

Step 2: Cream together butter and sugars. Add in eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Step 3: Sift together dry ingredients and add to the wet mixture until incorporated.

Step 4: Add in the chocolate chips. I also chopped up a chocolate bar and added that in as well.

Step 5: Add in the macadamia nuts and mix until evenly incorporated.

Step 6: Using a cookie scoop, place even-size balls of dough on a parchment or sil-pat lined baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

It’s too bad you can’t smell these through this post. Honestly, the aroma from the toasted macadamias and chocolate is unreal. If I could bottle that up into a candle I’d make millions. The chocolate and cookie is super soft, but the macadamia nuts are chock full of flavor and crunchiness.

These were a big hit at work on Tuesday. People were coming back for seconds, even thirds (don’t worry, I won’t reveal your identities).

Now on to the good part. California. My friend Sarah and I booked the trip back in April and spent the 4 months in between practicing our wine drinking skills. Making my mom proud, I took over 200 photos during the trip. The few below are some of the highlights, but I would need a separate blog post to dedicate to this trip because it was so much fun.

We took a wine tour in Sonoma all day on Friday. Our great tour guide “Dan the Man” taught us all about Brix and how to impress our friends with wine lingo. And after about 12 glasses of wine, he taught Sarah this sweet trick with her wine glass.

We went to San Francisco on Saturday and visited the Ghiradelli chocolate factory, where we watched an ice cream eating contest and then had to sample some of the chocolate.

The weather was perfect, and we took a bay cruise around the golden gate bridge.

On Sunday morning we were talked into biking over the golden gate bridge. It was an amazing experience and terrifying at the same time. That bridge is high up there, long, and it was windy. But we survived. And then some guy pretended to run away with my new camera when we asked him to take a picture. I also dropped my bike on my leg and a week later it looks like someone took a bat to my leg. I will tell you this. No spinning class will prepare you for the hills of California.

And then there was a whole lot of this going on. We ended the trip with a romantic waterfront dinner. Oh, and we decided we’re going to move to Sonoma and live on a vineyard … and we may have signed up for a wine club. But as Skip says, YOLO.