Nuts...

My new camera is driving me nuts.
It’s so pretty and I really love it but I’m beginning to get a little desperate.
It doesn’t matter what I do - all my pictures are either too light or too dark and too blurry or too dim. I really hope it’s just a temporary problem and I just haven’t figured out the light focus or something like that…

So under the impression that at least one of my 158 photo’s was good, and without further checking, I started tasting and…
all the cashew-caramel cookies disappeared quickly.
And this was the best picture in the bunch.
I’m sorry I can’t let you better see how incredibly delicious these cookies were…

Because they weren’t just good.
They were really, really good.
I know it’s a bit strange, but you make me most of the time happier with a good spoon of cookie dough then the cookie itself…
Well, these nut cookies are like the best cookie dough ever.
They are chewy, not too sweet, and the cashews are lovely caramelized in the oven. They have a good bite, a delicious sugary bottom and an amazing soft caramel swirl on top…oftewel; echte door-etertjes! (so it’s really hard to stop eating these…!)

I found the recipe online at MarthaStewart.com but I made some big changes in the process so I typed out what I’ve done here below.
If you want to check out the original recipe; click here

I don’t have a decent electric mixer to grind cashews with, only a puree mixer with a sharp blade which will make the nuts fly and spring everywhere (I have btw a rather horrific Christmas story about this blade - but that maybe for later…) so I just chopped 1 cup finely and kept the rest in big chunks. This worked out really well as I may say so.
For some reason I wanted to add pear as well. Don’t ask me why, I just had a feeling. It turned out to be a wrong feeling; there was absolutely no trace of pear in these cookies. Not that's incredibly terrible, I think they are pretty perfect just like this…
I kept the pear in the recipe what so ever - who knows how they would turn out without it??


Cashew Cookies (makes 24)
- 200g (1 ¾ cups) all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- 350g (3 cups) roasted, salted cashews
- 4 Tbsp sunflower oil
- 115g (1 stick, ½ cup) butter, softened
- 115g (¾ cup) packed light-brown sugar
- 100g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 pear
- 24 cubes soft caramel candy (200g, 7 ounces)
- 65ml (1/4 cup) heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. (350°F)
Mix flour and salt together in a small bowl and set aside. Finely chop 1 cup cashews and transfer them to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add butter and sugars and mix on medium speed until fluffy. (about 2 minutes)
Mix in egg, vanilla and oil. Reduce speed to low and gradually add flour mixture. Wash and dry the pear and thinly slice it with a cheese-slicer. Chop these slices into even smaller bits and mix it in with the reserved, roughly chopped cashews.

2. Shape dough into 4cm (1 1/2-inch) balls; space 5cm (2 inches) apart on 2 parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake 6 minutes and gently flatten with a spatula. Bake until bottoms are just golden, 6 to 7 minutes more. Let cool completely.

3. For the caramel, melt caramels with cream in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring. Let cool. Using a spoon, drizzle caramel over cookies and let set. Store the cookies in an airtight box in single layers.