A SUNSHINE tangent suitable to the occasion
[Sorry, I never know which way around to post double posts. The WINNERS are in the FIRST of tonight's entries, which is to say UNDERNEATH this one.]
Clearly this calls for a sticky, gooey, mmmmm, baaaaad for you recipe. Or an Ask Robin. Or both.
Let’s start with the sticky.
I can’t remember the last time I made these, and I found a great rush of longing flooding over me when, leafing through one of my notebooks, this recipe caught my eye. I don’t make them because Peter doesn’t like coconut. Fie. And it seems mean to make cookies your spouse won’t eat. Maybe I’ll have a bell ringer party some night he’s at bridge. ‘No, no, dear, we just had, uh, pretzels.’
Chocolate Macaroons
8 oz dark dark dark chocolate
2 large egg whites at room temp
1/2 c sugar (you may want slightly more depending on your chocolate and your coconut)
1 tsp GOOD vanilla extract (no fake stuff!!!)
2 c shredded coconut
Melt the chocolate however you melt chocolate. They usually tell you bain marie/double boiler but I now usually put it on a spreader on the hot spot at the front of the Aga in the morning and then in the afternoon when I wanted to make cookies, having forgotten all about the need for melted and cooled chocolate, there you have chocolate that is only just barely melted–do beat yours smooth–and hardly needs any cooling off at all. I love my Aga.
Heat oven to 350F
There are still people who beat egg whites with a rotary beater, but they are living in one of those reality TV reenactments of life before the internet and contact lenses. Beat the egg whites on medium high till fairly opaque but still slushy and then start sprinkling in the sugar. Keep beating. Sprinkle quickly and lavishly, but don’t dump it in. Now beat in vanilla. Finish beating till almost stiff. At this point I take the electric beater out and do the rest with a spoon. Pour the chocolate into the bowl in a ribbon, and gently fold it in; your whites are going to collapse anyway, but don’t make it any harder on them than you have to. Then, again gently, stir in the coconut.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Drop the glop in big fat spoonfuls. They don’t spread, but you don’t want them touching each other. Bake till you can see the texture of the surface change–it’ll also go a slightly different shade of brown. This usually takes about 15 minutes. Let cool. There should be a kind of crust on the outside and the inside is adorably gooey and chewy.
. . . BLAH ARRGH. No, we’re going to have Ask Robin tomorrow. I started answering the standard question about whether Sunshine’s recipes exist in this parallel universe, and was getting carried away.* And I want to get back to the piano tonight** and get to bed before dawn.***
* * *
* That thing I do so well
** I have to face frelling Dido again in less than forty eight hours. And furthermore Oisin is starting to grow restive about my never quite getting around to using him as an accompanist.
*** Which is becoming easier, as the days start closing in again toward autumn. Siiiiigh. However it also makes it easier to say hi to my mums and toddlers group (as Penelope calls it) as they burst, cheeping and cackling, out from under my eaves^, and still make it down to the mews for supper before Peter wants to go to bed.^^
^ For non-regular blog readers, I have a bat nursery in my roof, okay?
^^ Peter goes to bed ridiculously early.
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