Macadamia Flour substitute

Best substitute

Almond Flour

Use the same amount by weight, plus 1 to 2 teaspoons melted butter or oil per cup as the macadamia flour you are replacing

Best for shortbread and cookies

Different taste

Almond flour is the practical swap at 1:1 by weight, though it is drier, so add a teaspoon or two of melted butter per cup to make up the richness. Pecan flour is the closest match for sheer fat and richness, with a sweeter, browner character. Hazelnut flour also goes 1:1 if you want a toastier bake. Coconut flour is not interchangeable: use a quarter of the amount plus an extra egg and extra liquid.

Other macadamia flour substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Pecan Flour
Different taste
Use the same amount
Ground pecans, the closest thing to macadamia in fat content and richness.
What changes
Best for
pie crusts, cookies, crumb toppings, coffee cakes
Nearly as fatty as macadamia, so the crumb stays just as tender and short, which is the main thing macadamia flour is prized for. What changes is the flavor and the color: pecan is sweeter with a faint maple note and a slight tannic bitterness in the finish, and it turns the bake noticeably brown. A pale macadamia shortbread becomes a tan, nuttier cookie. It also browns faster, so pull it from the oven earlier.
3Hazelnut Flour
Different taste
Use the same amount
Ground hazelnuts, high in fat with a much more pronounced roasted flavor.
What changes
Best for
cookies, tortes, chocolate bakes, crusts
Similar fat level and the same tender, short crumb, so it performs well. The flavor is the whole story: hazelnut is assertive, toasty and slightly sweet in a way that walks all over anything delicate, so a lemon macadamia cake made with it becomes a hazelnut cake with lemon in it. Wonderful with chocolate and coffee. The crumb comes out beige to light brown rather than ivory.
4Cashew Flour
Different texture
Use the same amount
Ground cashews, mild and slightly sweet, closest in color to macadamia.
What changes
Best for
cakes, cookies, frostings and fillings, pale bakes
The nearest thing in appearance, since both are ivory-white, and mild enough not to hijack a delicate recipe. Cashews carry more starch and less fat than macadamias, so the crumb is slightly chewier and less crumbly, the bake a touch sweeter, and the carbohydrate count noticeably higher, which matters if you are counting. Add a teaspoon of butter per cup if you want the richness back.
5Coconut Flour
Taste and texture differ
Use ¼ cup coconut flour plus 1 extra egg and ¼ cup extra liquid for every 1 cup macadamia flour
Nut-free and low-carb, but it behaves in a completely different way.
What changes
Best for
muffins, pancakes, quick breads, nut-free baking
Do not swap this one for one, because coconut flour absorbs several times its weight in liquid and a direct swap produces something like dry crumbs. Even done properly the result is different in kind: cakey and absorbent rather than rich and short, with an unmistakable sweet coconut flavor. It is the right choice if the point is avoiding nuts entirely, and the wrong choice if the point is that buttery macadamia texture.
6Homemade Ground Macadamias
Different texture
Use the same amount by weight
Grinding your own raw macadamias, which costs far less than the packaged flour.
What changes
Best for
any recipe calling for macadamia flour, crusts, cookies, crumb toppings
Perfectly good, with one hazard: macadamias are so oily that a food processor turns them into macadamia butter in seconds. Freeze the nuts for half an hour first, pulse in one-second bursts, and add a tablespoon of the recipe's sweetener or a spoon of almond flour to the bowl to absorb released oil. Stop while it still looks like coarse sand. Homemade meal is coarser, so the bake will be slightly sandier and a little more rustic.

What is Macadamia Flour?

Macadamia Flour is Macadamia flour, also sold as macadamia nut flour, macadamia meal or ground macadamia, is finely milled raw macadamia nuts and is the fattiest and most buttery of the low-carb nut flours.

Cooking tips

Macadamia flour is in a recipe for fat and tenderness as much as for bulk. Its high oil content is what gives keto shortbread that short, melting, sandy break, so any swap with a leaner flour needs a little extra butter to reproduce it.
It is the lowest-carbohydrate nut flour in common use, lower than almond, which is exactly why it turns up in strict keto dessert recipes. Swapping in cashew or tigernut flour will raise the carb count of the recipe meaningfully.
All that oil means it burns easily. Bake at 25F below what a wheat recipe would use, watch the edges rather than the clock, and pull the pan when the rim is golden and the center still looks slightly underdone.
Chill the dough before baking. Macadamia doughs are so rich that they spread dramatically in a hot oven, and twenty minutes in the fridge is the difference between cookies and one large cookie.
Store it in the freezer. High-fat nut flours go rancid within weeks at room temperature, and rancid macadamia has an unmistakable stale crayon smell that no amount of vanilla will hide.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the macadamia flour out?

No. In a nut flour recipe it is essentially all of the dry ingredients, so it is providing the structure, the bulk and most of the fat at once. Leaving it out means there is no recipe left. Replace it by weight with another nut flour, adjusting fat as described above, or pick a recipe written around the flour you actually have.

Can I use almond flour instead of macadamia flour 1:1?

Yes, and this is the swap most people make. It works directly by weight. The result is slightly less rich and slightly firmer, and the buttery macadamia perfume is replaced by almond's milder sweetness. Stirring one or two teaspoons of melted butter per cup into the batter gets you very close to the original.

Is macadamia flour the same as macadamia meal?

Broadly yes, with a grind difference. Flour is milled finer and often from partly defatted nuts, while meal is coarser and full-fat. Meal makes a slightly sandier, more rustic crumb, which is an advantage in a pie crust and a small drawback in a delicate cake. They can be used interchangeably by weight.

Why did my macadamia flour turn into butter?

Because macadamias are around three-quarters fat, so the moment the grinder warms them the oil releases and the mixture goes from powder to paste. Freeze the nuts first, work in short pulses, keep the batch small, and add a spoon of the recipe's dry sweetener or a little almond flour to soak up the oil as you go.

Can I substitute macadamia flour for all-purpose flour?

Not one for one. It has no gluten, far more fat and far less starch, so a wheat cake recipe made with it will be greasy, heavy and will not rise. Use it in recipes designed for nut flours, where eggs and leavening are already adjusted, or replace at most a quarter of the wheat flour in a conventional recipe.

Related substitutes

More flour substitutes

Macadamia Flour substitute

Other macadamia flour substitutes

2Pecan Flour

3Hazelnut Flour

4Cashew Flour

5Coconut Flour

6Homemade Ground Macadamias