Bake 52 Week 23 - Coconut Macaroons

I'm not much of a fan of coconut but the whole idea of the baking group is to try things that you wouldn't normally bake. Plus the recipe is really simple so it wasn't a big deal to make these. This cookie is basically just coconut with some egg whites to hold it together.

The first step was to weigh out the coconut.



Next I mixed it in my food processor to get smaller pieces (the key to the best texture according to the cookbook).



The next step was to move the coconut to a bowl so I could use the processor to mix up the sugar and the egg whites.



Does this look light and foamy to you?



It looked right to me but when I dumped it into the coconut there was actually a lot of sugar left in the bottom of the bowl. So it didn't get mixed in with the eggs. Hmmm... hopefully it won't matter once I mix everything together.

After a half hour in the fridge I got the oven heating and lined two cookie sheets with parchment paper. I was a bit anal with the parchment paper, spending some time trimming it down to just fit the pans.



Since I'm a huge fan of chocolate and don't really believe something can be considered a dessert or cookie without chocolate, I choose to make the chocolate dipped macaroons. Which meant that I was supposed to form the cookies into haystacks instead of rolling it into balls. The cocount mix didn't hold together very well. I think it would have been better if I'd rolled the mix into a ball and then just flattened out the bottom.



The top row is after I've pushed the pile into a "haystack". The second row is how it came out when I dropped a heaping tablespoon full on the cookie sheet. I never really did get much of a haystack. I mostly was glad if the coconunt all held together so it would hopefully be a single cookie. Even that took more fussing then I really wanted... The piles (oops! I mean cookies) looked pretty big but the recipe indicates that it only makes 24 cookies. So I only made 24 - I'm so obedient.

Here they are all ready to go in the oven!



After 14 minutes with a rotation at 7 minutes the cookies looked browned but not as dark as the book. So I gave them a couple more minutes. The tops still didn't look as dark as they should but the bases were getting pretty dark so I pulled them out.



After they had cooled on the cookie sheet for an hour it was time to dip them in chocolate. The first ones got a lot more chocolate then the later ones. I pretty much ran out with about three cookies to go.



I let them sit for a while to let the chocolate set up. But it was still a bit soft even a couple of hours later when I decided it was time to try one.

My verdict - very good for a coconut cookie, but still a coconut cookie. I wasn't even tempted to have a second cookie. So not much of a dessert in that sense. But I'd have to say the book was right about getting the coconut down to smaller pieces. The texture was very good.

For the full recipe see Emily's blog. If you decide to go with the chocolate dipped ones you just need to melt 6 oz of semi-sweet chocolate. But to get a more even coverage I'd suggest you use a spatula or something to scrape of the excess so you don't run out.