So I made the chocolate chip coconut macaroons from the recipe I shared in my last post.
Actually, my cousin made them first. She was very excited: she even went out and bought parchment paper! But she called me doubtfully while pulling them out of the oven. “I don’t think I did this right,” she mumbled. “They’re not chewy like macaroons are supposed to be.”
Oh, no, I assured her. They’re not supposed to be chewy! These are “light and airy” macaroons, not the typical chewy-cakey-sticky-heavy macaroons.
Oh, she considered, crunching away. “Maybe I did it right then. But the smaller cookies turned out better than the larger, fist-sized balls.”
She’s right: the optimum size for these cookies is one teaspoon-full (from your flatware set). I also decreased the amount of coconut slightly, from 5 1/3 cups to 5 cups, so that the batter wasn’t quite so dry. When I folded in the coconut and chocolate chips, I added the coconut cup by cup and made sure to fully coat all the coconut flakes with the egg white mixture so that it would all be sticky.
She really blew me away when she told me she beat the eggs by hand. Wow! I used an electric hand mixer and it still took a while to get those egg whites to stand in peaks!
Realize that it still might seem like the cookies are not completely binding when you drop the teaspoon-fulls onto the baking sheet, but they will meld together in the oven and produce a cookie that has a lot of air thoroughout, giving it a delightful crunch and lightness.
As I’ve said before, these macaroons get rave reviews at dinner parties, and I completely agree. The only downside is that it is easy to get carried away and not realize how many you are eating! They are utterly delicious!
