I’ve wanted to make macaroons for a while & today I finally did. It’s actually a lot easier than I originally thought it would be. They didn’t turn out perfect but what recipe does on the first try? That’s why you try again! Mine looked good for a first try and tasted amazing, so there’s a plus. But they just didn’t look the way I thought they would. So without further ado, here’s my attempt & partial success at macaroons. You’ll see why I say partial success a little later in this post.

Ingredients:

• 1 14 ounce bag sweetened shredded coconut
• 1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 tsp salt

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees F. Then in a large bowl, combine the coconut, condensed milk, & vanilla.

Once everything is mixed together and looks like this set it off to the side for now.

Next, in the bowl of a stand mixer or if you have a hand mixer that works too. Combine the egg whites, salt & 2/8 tsp cream of tartar.

Why the 2/8 tsp? Adding 1/8 tsp cream of tartar per egg white assures that you have the right amount of acidity to stabilize the meringue once it’s been whipped up to the correct consistency. Whip the egg whites until medium peaks form. Medium peaks look like the picture below. See how the meringue is starting to look glossy and holds its shape without melting back into itself, yet the very top is just so slightly folding into itself? That’s what you want.

Now it’s time to combine the meringue with the coconut mixture.

Gently fold the meringue into the coconut mixture in thirds, being careful not to deflate the meringue or over mix the batter. Once you have everything mixed together and ready to go, it should look like this,

Line a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper. The parchment does two things here. First, it evenly distributes the heat during baking. Secondly, it keeps the mixture from running all over the place. Drop the batter onto the pan using either a small cookie scoop or a 1 tsp measure. I used a mini cookie scoop because I had it on hand. If you don’t have a mini cookie scoop, you can always use a teaspoon measure and either way portion out 2 teaspoons of batter per cookie. Bake them for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Depending on your oven, start checking on them once they’ve been in the oven for 20 minutes. If you let them bake past the golden brown edges and slightly browned tops, the bottom will start to burn and nobody wants a burnt tasting macaroon.

Just a warning, this batter is on the runny side, so it’s best to refrigerate the batter for a little bit before scooping and baking. I didn’t know this until I pulled my first batch of macaroons out of the oven and they had spread out a little more than I thought they would. They looked alright before I put them in the oven. Which looked like this:

Not too bad right? That’s what I thought until I went to check on them half way through the baking time and saw that they started to spread out. So I put the last little pan that had the last bits of batter on it into the fridge until these were done.

Still not too bad-looking, they just spread out a little more than I was expecting them to. They still tasted amazing though, what could make them taste better? Dipping the bottoms in chocolate, that’s what!

All I did was melt down 4 oz of semi sweet chocolate but you can use whatever chocolate you like, this is just what I had on hand.

If you give the chocolate a rough chop before melting it, the chocolate melts a little bit faster than just melting the squares of chocolate. I used a candy melting pot to melt my chocolate just because I have one in my stash of baking tools, but you can also melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals stirring after each interval until the chocolate is completely melted.

Now comes the messy part, dipping the macaroons and not getting chocolate all over the counter. So to prevent this, I put another piece of parchment paper down to put the macaroons on while the chocolate sets up.

This idea worked very well, the chocolate dripped onto the parchment paper, not the countertop. Here’s what they look like once they’ve been dipped in the delicious chocolate.

They may not be perfectly formed macaroons, but they are yummy. I’m still going to try refrigerating the batter before scooping them next time, so they look as good as they taste!

Here’s a link to the recipe I used if you want to try it out: coconut macaroons

Peace, Love, and Sugar

Brooke