The One Where I Wear My New Apron

It was not supposed to be baking or blogging night...It was supposed to be "get all of my lessons planned for next week so I can enjoy the long weekend" night. BUT...I went to the flea market this afternoon and bought the sweetest little apron, and I was so inspired to use it that I just had to bake something. The fabric is really sweet, but the best part are the pockets on each side. And even though I've always kind of thought half aprons were useless, I just couldn't resist this one.

POCKETS!!

And even though I was specifically instructed NOT to bake any cookies for this weekend, I really couldn't help it. You all remember the EPIC failure of the white chocolate macadamia nut cupcakes, right?! Well, I had leftover chocolate and nuts from that disaster, so I said to myself, "don't be scared of the white chocolate...you can do it" and I set out to make white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. (Plus I thought it might be a nice change from making so many cupcakes)

I used to LOVE the white chocolate macadamia nut cookies from Mrs. Fields. I would always get them at the mall (no semi-sweet chocolate chip for me). So I went straight to my Mrs. Fields cookie book (signed by Mrs. Fields herself!).

Imagine my horror when there was no such recipe in this book. So instead I found one from the Brown Eyed Baker (cute name, huh?). I crossed my fingers that she was a better baker than the Love and Olive Oil people (who inspired the white chocolate cupcake fiasco).

Side Note: Last time I was at Whole Foods, I discovered that not only is there Fair Trade white sugar, but also brown and powdered options. I got some of the brown sugar and tonight was my first time to use it. I was kind of nervous, because even though the bag specifically says Light Brown Sugar, it looked pretty dark to me. Also, it smells a little funny.

I also used whole wheat white flour instead of regular white flour. So I was using different flour and sugar from the recipe. And we all know what happened last time I experimented with a recipe!

Luckily, the cookies turned out much better than the cupcakes. The sugars/flour all worked out fine, too. Although I think I might have overdone it on the nuts and chocolate - some of them are pretty crowded cookies!

OK, maybe now I will take off my apron (yep, I'm still wearing it, even though the cookies are done and out of the oven) and do some lesson plans...