Thursday, December 17, 2009

Coconut Macaroons

For my office potluck, I was given the challenge of making macaroons for the first time at the request of a British coworker.

Using Google, I found a simple recipe from Ina Garten:

What could be simpler than just five ingredients? And I swapped the kosher salt for the regular salt that I had on hand.

Whipping the egg whites went well - while I didn't take a picture, I used the Top Chef test of holding the bowl upside down to see if the egg whites were stiff enough. Lucky for me, they held on!

I had my doubts with the next step- how does one "gently fold" whipped egg whites into this gluey, clumpy mixture of coconut, condensed milk and vanilla?
With a lot of gentle mixing and folding, it all came together and I used my handy dandy Oxo cookie scoop to form the unruly mixture into something resembling a ball:

The macaroons were supposed to bake for 25 minutes until golden brown - all it took was 14 minutes for them to scorch in my oven, and this was with me lowering the oven temperature by 25 degrees:

Despite their less than golden brown appearance, everyone raved that they were perfectly crisp on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside. Personally, they were a little too sweet for me so I think I'll try it with unsweetened coconut next time:

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