When life hands you coconuts

Make macaroons!
Perusing the bulk food section on Friday at Wild Oats, I discovered they have organic shredded coconut! It was way on the end.

I have been buying shredded coconut in packages that cost nearly twice as much. This was $2.19 a pound. And at Safeway, you can't even get the unsweetened kind.

I whipped up batch of macaroons last night (seriously, these are probably the easiest cookies you can make). I used the same coconut macaroon recipe as before but tried Demerara sugar to see how it would taste. This is raw cane sugar that has really large crystals and a slightly "browner" taste. I used just under 3/4 cup.

The larger crystals made the macaroons a little trickier to shape, as they didn't want to stick together, so I just went for lumps instead of fancy pyramids. But the taste was really good, and they didn't seem to burn on the bottoms as quickly. I left them in the oven longer (about 12 minutes) to get brown and crispy the way I like them.

In the middle of the night in a Tupperware container they don't look all that fabulous, but served up with pretty china and linens they become elegant.
Thanks to Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini for the original recipe.

Coconut macaroons

I was catching up today on the food blogs I enjoy and ran across Clotilde's lovely macaroons at Chocolate & Zucchini. Very pretty! And such an intriguing shape. Since I just happened to have a bag of shredded coconut (purchased on a whim a few weeks ago) and the night off work (yay!), I decided to give them a try.

First I checked around to see how others make macaroons, since I didn't have quite as much coconut as her recipe called for. There's a lot of variation out there, both in ingredients and prep, so I figured I had a fair amount of latitude.
I used 3 egg whites, 3/4 cup sugar, a pinch of salt, a splash of pure vanilla extract (from my vanilla winnings; thanks, Jaden!) and an 8 oz. bag of shredded, unsweetened coconut. The oven was preheated to 350 and I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper.

	Some recipes called for using an electric mixer to beat the egg whites until fluffy, while Clotilde doesn't beat them at all. I split the difference and beat them by hand a bit, then added the vanilla and folded in the dry ingredients, which I'd mixed in a separate bowl.

I shaped the pyramids by hand, about a tablespoon per cookie. As I read in other recipes, it does help to moisten your hands for this. The shaping is fussy but satisfying. Into the oven they went.
The recipe says about 12 minutes, but at 10, I noticed the bottoms were browning much faster than the other sides, so I quickly reached in and flipped them with a small spatula. And discovered how very asymmetrical I'd made them. But that was OK. A few minutes more and they were done. Not as pretty as Clotilde's but a fair first effort. And tasty! Nice and crusty-crunchy on the outside, but still chewy and soft inside.

To tweak this recipe, I think I could reduce the sugar to a heaping half a cup, and I would use medium-shredded coconut rather than fine, for a more textured cookie.

I've got a second sheet of this batch in the oven now, this time on a silpat, and I made them a little smaller, which I think I will like better. Stand by ...

Well, the silpat didn't seem to make much of a difference in the bottom browning. Then again, I'm using a pretty cheap cookie sheet. I'll add a better one to my mental "allowed to buy on my next restaurant supply outing" list. But I do like the smaller cookie, more like half a tablespoon's worth. I prefer an equal proportion of chewy to crunchy.

(Eating another one) Mmmmm .... yeah.

P.S. from April 5: Made another batch of these with demerara sugar and they came out delicious! Click here for pictures.