Recipe: Coconut Macaroons

By a stroke of luck, my attending physician gave me the afternoon off! We had an uncharacteristically short inpatient list and had finished rounds, discharges, and dictations by 11:30 am. My awesome co-resident is on-call tonight anyways so didn't mind covering the ward, meaning that I'm free of responsibilities for the rest of this beautifully sunny day.

As I spent Saturday working and all of yesterday sleeping (getting over my cold and recovering from the busiest call shift ever on Saturday night), I had a few weekend errands to catch up on. First off, I stopped at Superstore to pick up groceries. Enjoying my newfound time, I perused the aisles a bit and stumbled across coconut on sale. One aisle over, condensed milk was also on sale. To me, that meant one thing: coconut macaroons.

My mother and I share a love for coconut and attempted macaroons for the first time when I visited home over winter break. Following Kristil Lyle's highly rated AllRecipes.com coconut macaroon recipe, we were pleased at how well these macaroons turned out -- sweet, chewy, and deliciously satisfying.

The taste was nostalgic for my mom, reminding her of a kind of coconut candy she'd buy at school bake sales. To me, they tasted as good as any store-bought version -- and were surprisingly simple to make. Here's the recipe:

• 2/3 cup flour
• 5 1/2 cups flaked coconut (we used sweetened)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 (14-ounce) can condensed milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, coconut, and salt; then stir in the condensed milk and vanilla. Drop the cookies (golf-ball sized) onto aluminum foil-lined cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the coconut is lightly toasted. If the cookies are difficult to remove from the foil, wait until they have cooled -- they should peel off easily.

pre-baking

lightly browned and ready to come out of the oven

For a coconut lover, I think these macaroons top coconut blondies, but only because they contain more coconut -- from a deliciousness perspective, I'd be hard pressed to pick a winner. If you decide to make a batch (which I'd strongly recommend) I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!