Coconut Cookie Cups

I love coconut a lot, and my husband fairly recently made a super decadent, Triple Layer Coconut cake that used lots of coconut. He had bought extra coconut so we had nearly two bags of coconut left over. Coconut can get really dry if you let it sit too long, so I’ve had in the back of my mind that I should find a recipe using coconut. I saw these come across Food Gawker and thought they would be perfect.

The original recipe used regular sized muffin tins for her cookie cups, and I think that would just be too large for a cookie. I halved the recipe and used mini muffin cups, which makes a nice 2 or 3 bite cookie. The quantities you see here are the halved recipe, and I made 3 dozen cookie cups. I now have most of a can of sweetened condensed milk left over, so let me know if you have any ideas for using that up!

I should remember to make cookies in mini muffin pans when my kitchen is hot! I was able to bake all of the cups at once, and they were only in the oven for 10 minutes. I hardly had to have the oven on at all. This makes a little more filling that you need, but I imagine a bigger cookie cup would have a greater cookie-to-filling ratio. These cookies were easy to make and look picture perfect. They have a good coconut flavor and are sturdy enough to travel anywhere you want to take them.

Coconut Cookie Cups

2-1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

¾ cup butter, melted

¾ cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon coconut extract

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ cup sweetened shredded coconut

1-1/2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

3.5 ounces sweetened condensed milk

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 3 mini muffin pans (each with 12 indentations) with nonstick cooking spray.

 In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt, set aside. In a large mixer bowl, add the melted butter, brown sugar, sugar, coconut extract and vanilla. Stir on medium until smooth. Add the egg and egg yolk and stir again to combine. Add half of the flour mixture and stir on low until nearly fully incorporated. Add the remaining flour and stir again, mixing until nearly incorporated. Add the ½ cup coconut and stir again on low, ensuring that all the ingredients are combined.

Using a small cookie scoop, scoop the dough into the prepared mini muffin pans, filling each muffin cup 2/3 full.

Bake for 9-11 minutes; the cookies may look slightly under baked in the center but will be firm to the touch and slightly browned along the edges. Cool in the pan for 20 minutes.

While the cookies are cooling in the pan, make the filling: combine the 1-1/2 cups coconut, sweetened condensed milk and the salt in a medium bowl. Stir until the mixture is cohesive. Place the bowl in the freezer to set while the cookies continue to cool.

  

Remove the cookies from the pan and cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. As the cookies cool, the center of the cookies should fall and create a cup. Once cool, spoon a small amount of coconut filling onto the center of each cookie cup.

Recipe from Kailley’s Kitchen