Any recipe successfully utilizing egg whites is always a keeper. This recipe is adapted from Alice Medrich’s “Chocolate Holidays”. You can call these cookies macaroons and serve them for Passover, or name them latkes and include into your Hanukkah menu. But, in my opinion, these cookies deserve to be baked more often than just twice a year. They are good, crunchy outside, moist and almost fudgy inside.
Makes about 40 2-inch cookies
Ingredients:
- 4 egg whites
- 3 cups sweetened shredded coconut
- 3 ½ oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
- 6 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- Scant ¼ tsp salt
Preparation:
Center an oven rack and preheat the oven to 350F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Set aside.
Combine all of the ingredients in a large heatproof mixing bowl, preferably stainless steel. Set the bowl in a skillet of barely simmering water and stir the mixture, scraping the bottom to prevent burning, until it is sticky and hot to the touch.
Scoop rounded tablespoons of the mixture about 1 inch apart on the cookie sheets. Flatten each cookie slightly with a damp finger to resemble miniature potato pancakes. Bake, in batches, until the cookies feel dry on the surface and the protruding coconut shreds are dark golden brown and the interior still looks like melted chocolate, about 14 minutes. Slide the parchment onto a cooling rack and cool the cookies completely before removing them from the parchment. Or, if using the silicone mats, cool the cookies on the sheets on the rack, and then, using an offset spatula, transfer the cookies from the mats onto the cooling rack to cool completely.
The cookies are most delicious on the day they are baked. They can be stored, though, airtight, for 4 to 5 days.
