Hazelnut-White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Author Notes

About three years ago, I was honored to have been appointed to the American Board of Optometry--the group of people who write and administer board certification exams in my profession. We're a new board, so we've come to work closely together even though we're scattered all over the country. The other board members know of my cooking adventures--we were all together the year my Ginger Apple Torte won that week's Food52 contest. Since then, they have been clamoring for me to bake for them. We have a meeting next week, so I collected everyone's cookie ideas, and started searching for recipes. This one is based on a request for white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. I started with Alice Medrich's wonderful recipe, but I couldn't find macadamia nuts. I did have a bag of hazelnuts in the freezer and thought they'd be a worthy substitute. I loved her idea of grinding oats into a flour; I was out of oats (I also made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies.), but I had some multi-grain cereal in the pantry and thought that would work. The result is buttery and crunchy with a hint of almond and vanilla. It's worth seeking out a good bar of white chocolate--I used Ghirardelli--because the white chocolate chips are really not the same. Or you could make these into a healthy-ish breakfast cookie by replacing the white chocolate with raisins or dried cranberries. I chose them for the "road trip" because we all ate them for breakfast! —drbabs