This Macadamia and Dried Cherry Cookie recipe tastes great and isn’t too sweet.  The original recipe was from Cooking Light Magazine back in December of 2009.  I converted their recipe to gluten free, reduced the amount of sugar, used coconut sugar in place of the light brown sugar and used dried tart cherries in place of dried cranberries.

I liked Cooking Light’s concept of grinding the macadamia nuts up in your food processor to make a nut butter to use in these cookies.  The cookies are incredible if you eat one (or two!) while they are still warm from the oven- the cookie itself is soft and so are the dried cherry pieces.  I thought that these cookies would turn out a little bit heavy because of the macadamia butter, but they seem very light.

I substituted coconut sugar for the brown sugar because it has a much lower glycemic index rating and will not affect your body as much as regular sugar.Coconut palm sugar is 35 on the glycemic scale and white sugar is 80!

I bought Coconut Secret brand coconut palm sugar at my local health food store and thought it had a slight burnt taste.  I ordered Madhava brand from Amazon and found it to have a better flavor.  The price was great too (this is packaged as a 6 pack)

The dough turned out pretty sticky because I added a couple of teaspoons of water.  Sometimes gluten free cookie dough gets extra dry because of the rice flour, so I add just a little bit of water.  Cooking Light advised refrigerating the dough for 10 minutes but I found that you can refrigerate it for several hours and it is even easier to handle.

I baked these cookies in my Cuisinart “toaster oven” in the garage because the house is already heating up as we head into summer this year.  There are positives and negatives about my baking in the little oven in the garage.  The positives are- the house doesn’t get hot, so I can bake all year long; it uses a lot less electricity and it also is much more efficient at achieving and holding the desired temperature.  The negatives are- you are running back and forth a lot because the oven is in the garage and also because it only holds the one pan which is 12″ x 12″.  I baked 16 of these cookies at a time on my pan, but if it was a cookie that spread out, you could only bake 9 at a time.  You also have to make sure that you set a timer inside the house for whatever you are doing in the garage because it’s easy to get busy doing something else and forget about it.  “Out of sight, out of mind”  It’s very true in this case!

I shared this recipe with Slightly Indulgent Tuesday at Simply Sugar and Gluten Free, The Hearth and Soul Hop at 21st Century Housewife, Fat Tuesday at Real Food Forager, Gluten Free Wednesdays at The Gluten Free Homemaker, Allergy Free Wednesdays at The Tasty Alternative, Real Food Wednesday at Kelly The Kitchen Kop, Full Plate Thursday at Miz Helens Country Cottage, Pennywise Platter Thursday at The Nourishing Gourmet, Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm

If you love macadamia nuts, here is another cookie recipe that I posted previously:

Butterscotch Macadamia Nut Cookies