The Best Coconut Macaroons

My apologies if I've been a little M.I.A. these days. Brad and I are in the process of planning a wedding and buying a home, which means that a lot of my free time has been spent between theknot.com and faxing financial documents to the mortgage lender. Fun times!

While I've been cooking dinner in the evenings after work, I haven't been trying too many new recipes or baking much lately. But somewhere along the way I volunteered to deliver baked goods for a fundraiser that my friend Shannon was hosting on Saturday night. I wanted to bring a variety of bite-sized items, so I ended up making Chocolate Chocolate (Chocolate) Chip Cookies, White Chocolate Walnut Toffee Blondies (I used the recipe on my blog as the base and switched up the add-ins — and yes, they taste as phenomenal as they sound!), and Coconut Macaroons.

I've tried several recipes over the years for coconut macaroons and have never been too wowed. Ina Garten's recipe, however, is the best I've tried — they are light, airy, sweet, and coconutty (is that even a word?). And the recipe is super easy, especially if you're using a stand mixer for the egg whites!

Coconut Macaroons (makes about 40 macaroons)

Ingredients: 
14 oz. sweetened shredded coconut
14 oz. sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 extra-large egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 tsp. kosher salt

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
• Combine the coconut, condensed milk, and vanilla in a large bowl. 
• Whip the egg whites and salt on high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until they make medium-firm peaks. (A hand mixer will work too if that's all you have!) 
• Carefully fold the egg whites into the coconut mixture. Be sure to fold gently so your egg whites don't fall flat.
• Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Drop the batter onto the cookie sheets using an ice cream scoop. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Cool and serve.

If you're feeling wild, you can dip the bottoms of each macaroon into dark chocolate and let the chocolate harden on a cookie sheet. I also love coconut macaroons made with almond extract instead of vanilla — experiment away!