Coconut Rose and updated Macaroons for Passover

Click HERE for an updated post to GREAT macaroons for your Passover (or Easter) or ANYthing table.

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?)

Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate Chips, Chocolate and Coconut Macaroons and Almond Macaroons, "Suviroons" and Chocolate Dipped

Coconut Macaroons with chocolate chips 

Chocolate  and Coconut Macaroons

Almond and Coconut Macaroons, Chocolate Dipped

Suviroons 

Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate Chips

and

Almond and Coconut Macaroons, Chocolate Dipped
and 
"Suviroons" (dedicated to Suvir Saran)

These macaroons aren’t the same kind that people queued up around the block for when Ladurée opened in New York a couple of months ago. After spending several hours winding up the bottoms of digestive biscuit and tea tins that played "God Save the Queen" and "How Much is That Doggie in the Window" at Fortnum and Mason's in London, (I bought them) a few weeks ago, we went across the street to a quiet table at Ladurée, and ate some macarons of memory ... pear and ginger, pistachio - and others. THOSE macarons aren’t the ones that make your fingers bleed when you open the round tin to release the foil top that keeps them gummy moist. They're the French ones. 

My Grandma Rae would've said, "what are you talking about, pear macaroons?". 

Two years ago, my son called me in a panic. He’d been invited to a seder (a Passover dinner that literally means 'order', but should mean 'I need a gentle laxative') in London and needed some recipes. Nowhere in Oxford or London could he find matzo cake meal. So, for the past two years, I’ve been sending it over to him so he can make the ‘famous’ Passover Mandel Bread (recipe forthcoming – but doesn’t everybody have it already?)

Subsequently, we went with macaroons. The Jewish ones.

I sent him Ina Garten’s and Martha Stewart’s recipes. They were all I could dig up. 

Here are a couple of easy and fool-proof recipes that rival the canned ones. They’re better more haimish than Ina’s or Martha’s (sorry, girls); and I promise they will be a lovely addition to a Passover, Easter, Persian New Year, April Fool’s, May Day, or your next festive meal.

Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate Chips

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

2/3 c. sweetened condensed milk (about ½ of the can)

2 size large egg whites

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1/8 tsp. kosher salt

12 oz. shredded, unsweetened coconut (I like Bob’s Red Mill, and the bag is exactly 12 oz!)

¾ c. semisweet chocolate chips (I heart Guittard!)

for Chocolate Macaroons change quantity of coconut and add cocoa powder:

11 oz. shredded, unsweetened coconut

1 oz. (1/2 c.) dark, good quality unsweetened cocoa

½ c. dark chocolate chips (Guittard or Ghiradelli)


for "Suviroons" (dedicated to my friend, teacher and mentor, Suvir Saran (whose most recent cookbook, Masala Farm was just nominated for a James Beard award for "American Cooking"!)
try this twist:
10 oz. shredded, unsweetened coconut
3 oz. chopped pistachios (raw, but toast and cool them)
1/2 c. chopped candied ginger
1 to 2 Tbsp. rose water

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 325º

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper

Whisk together (you can use your Kitchen Aid!): sweetened condensed milk, egg white, extract and salt, until well combined

Add coconut and mix.

Remove from machine and fold in chips by hand.

Using a 1 ½ inch cookie scoop, or by tsp., drop onto the prepared sheets.

Bake until slightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Cool, then peel from parchment.

Store airtight. May be frozen until you’ve feathered the joint.

Yield: (with the 1 ½” cookie scoop you’ll get about 4 dozen. With a tsp., probably about 2 ½ to 3 dozen.)

ALMOND AND COCONUT MACAROONS

CHOCOLATE DIPPED (Variation)

Blue Heron Kitchen

Ingredients:

2/3 c. sweetened condensed milk (about ½ of the can)

2 size large egg whites

1 ½  tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. pure almond extract

1/8 tsp. kosher salt

8 oz. shredded, unsweetened coconut (I like Bob’s Red Mill)

4 oz. finely ground almonds (I buy mine at Patel Brothers. If you're not lucky enough to live near this wonderful Indian supermarket, look for finely ground almond meal. Greek markets have it, French markets do, bien sur, and Bob's Red Mill produces it too.)

6 oz. (approx..) good quality dark chocolate, melted, for dipping the macaroons (I used Jacques Torres' dark chocolate discs. You can buy them online (click on this link) or at his shops in Chelsea Market or in Brooklyn on on the Upper West Side.) Or use any dark chocolate that you like! Here's a truc: add a little roasted almond oil .. or flavorless oil if you don't have nut oils handy to the melted chocolate. and add a touch of Boyajian's orange oil - but just a smidge. The oil will add a sheen and the orange will lift up the almond flavor. 

optional: anything decorative for the top of each macaroon (how about a candied icon of one of the ten plagues .. only I wouldn't recommend ‘boils’ or ‘slaying of the first born’ - or just some little sprinkles. they're very sweet.)

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 325º

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper

Whisk together (you can use your Kitchen Aid!): sweetened condensed milk, egg white, extracts and salt, until well combined

Add coconut and almond meal and mix well.

Remove from machine.

Using a 1 ½ inch cookie scoop, or by tsp., drop onto the prepared sheets.

Bake until slightly browned, 10 to 15 minutes. Be sure that you don’t burn these. The bottoms will get brown. Check that they’re not getting too dark on the bottom.

Cool, then peel from parchment.

Melt the chocolate in a small bowl on top of barely simmering water (or in a microwave). Take care that no water or steam gets into the chocolate. 

Dip the macaroons in the chocolate and place them on a rack that is set over waxed paper .. to catch any drips.

After they've set a bit, you can drip a little more on top and then put a little decoration on the top.

You can set them up quickly in the fridge. Serve immediately or keep them in a container, with waxed paper over the cookies, sealed and refrigerated, until you're ready to serve them.

Store airtight. May be frozen until you’ve feathered the joint.

Yield: (with the 1 ½” cookie scoop you’ll get about 4 dozen. With a tsp., probably about 2 ½ to 3 dozen.)

To those who celebrate Passover, have a sweet Passover. Many people wish that 'next year we celebrate in Jerusalem'. I'm not interested in any such thing. My wish for next year: (two, since there are two recipes here: the Unites States vacates Afghanistan; and  that health care becomes accesible to all Americans (that includes my darling daughter.)

Happy spring to everyone!

Peace and love,

Jane