Macaroons

A couple of friends from work came over the other day to make Christmas cookies and we had a great time! We made some sugar cookies and also made these macaroons. My friend brought the recipe and the three of us put them together. I still need to decorate the sugar cookies, but I hope to do that soon, so I will be posting those in a bit.

I hadn’t made macaroons in many, many years. I love coconut, so I was happy to give these another try. They use unsweetened coconut, which can be tricky to find in normal grocery stores. My friend had brought unsweetened coconut, but it was in big flakes which would make for a very different cookie. I had some shredded unsweetened coconut from Whole Foods that we ended up using instead. The big flaked coconut will look great as decoration on a coconut cake, so I’ll have to make that soon!

These are fairly simple, but you really need a stand mixer to beat the egg whites. The original recipe said that it would take 8-10 minutes for the egg whites to get to the stiff peak stage, but it took much longer than that. I say below that it was 12 minutes, but I actually lost track of time and it may have been even longer. Folding in the coconut is easy since the egg whites aren’t all that fragile. We dropped this by tablespoons on the baking sheet, but you could also pipe these if you want a fancier cookie. I had forgotten how much I like macaroons; they have such great a great nutty, coconut flavor.

2 egg whites
½ cup sugar
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/3 cup flour
3 cups unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, whisk the egg whites until frothy and the egg whites start to expand. Add the sugar, honey, and extracts and beat on high until the egg whites are stiff and hold peaks, about 12 minutes. Fold in the flour and coconut.

Drop by tablespoonfuls on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned and set. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for a minute before carefully removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from my friend Kate’s cookbook