Coconut Rose and updated Macaroons for Passover

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New and different!

Coconut Rose Macaroons

Adapted from Nick Malgieri by Blue Heron Kitchen

The mock chestnut torte’s out of the oven and before the chocolate almond butter torte goes in, I’m taking a macaroon break. Tomorrow’s the first seder; and I’m preparing some deserts for my friend, Rick’s annual “let’s skip the torture and get to the meal seder”.

These are unusual and if you don’t have rose sugar in your larder, you’ll want to make some for future use. You can use regular sugar; and if you have rose water, add some for a hint of rose flavuh. The original recipe is for a vanilla flavored macaroon.

Sweetened coconut and whole eggs are the unusual ingredients. Baker beware: as these bake, they’ll ‘weep’. Half way through the bake, you're going to dry their 'tears' and pull them back together. (Instructions follow.) 

These are quick and easy.  To make rose-infused sugar: buy edible rose buds at any Middle Eastern market .. throw them into a container with sugar and in a week, you’ll have rose-scented sugar! (How lovely your butter cookies will be .. or your cream biscuits or scones will taste.)

Ingredients:

7 oz. package sweetened shredded coconut 

2 large eggs (room temperature)

pinch of kosher salt

2/3 cup rose sugar (or regular sugar .. or vanilla, cardamom etc. sugar)

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

a few drops of rose water (food grade), to taste

Heinz Quenelle, posing with Laxmi after attending his book group that just read, guess what?....
"God Bless You, Mrs. Rosewater"!

Procedure:

Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a food processor, pulse, several times, the shredded coconut, until it is chopped. Take care to not pulverize or grind the coconut.

In a medium bowl or in the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk the eggs with the salt until well combined.

Add the sugar, in a stream, mixing until ‘creamy’. Add vanilla and rose water, to taste.

Add coconut. (May add some optional red vegetable food color … India Tree makes natural colorings. This will only tint them slightly, so don’t expect really red macaroons. Please don’t use chemical colorings.)

Using a cookie scoop or rounded tablespoon, drop onto cookie sheet, spacing 2” apart.

Bake for approx.. 6 minutes. Half way through the bake, open the oven and using your fingers or the back of a spoon or fork, gently press down coconut into any ‘weeping’ liquid

Rotate baking pans, top to bottom and front to back.

Bake until deep golden brown, but when poked, still soft inside.

Cool on rakes and store between sheets of parchment or waxed paper in a cookie tin with a tight fitting cover.

These may be frozen (but why?)