Coconut Macaroons III

The ease of making these decadent cookies belies how wonderful they are: Blue Ribbon Winner for sure! My husband, who likes coconut only in very small doses and only toasted, could not stop eating them. I found that the recipe yielded 18 cookies that were larger than golf balls and that took the full 15 minutes to bake. Also, a 14-ounce package of coconut equaled the 5 1/2 cups. Perfect! Thanks for sharing.

This is the real thing. Parchment paper is a must here. I've tried adding a teaspoon of almond extract for a change with great sucess. I like to refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours which results in a much rounder macaroon that can be dipped in chocolate.

This is a great easy recipe. I used a Matfer silicon pad on my cookie sheet which eliminated any sticking and burning. Athough the recipe doesn't specify it, I HIGHLY suggest using sweetened coconut. Also, I subsituted one of the tsps of vanilla extract for almond extract, which worked great. I definitely suggest mixing the extract(s) into the condensed milk before adding to the coconut mix - that way you are sure the flavor is evenly distributed throughout the dough. Molding the cookies was a quite a sticky process, so I just dipped a couple of fingers in a little bit of water as I patted down the dough so that I could get the cookies into a solid shape and still be able to get them onto the cookie sheet in one piece. As an aside, I have made chocolate macaroons before by adding a square (or two) of melted unsweetened bakers chocolate to the condensed milk mix, and I am sure that would work for this recipe as well. Or you could try pressing a maraschino cherry into the top of each cookie - it makes for a very classy presentation - people love it!