Chocolate Chip, Pecan & Coconut Macaroons—Take Two

I have always loved coconut macaroons. I get my love of coconut from my grandmother. Shockingly, she wasn’t crazy about chocolate, but she was crazy about sugar and sweets. Over the years, I have tried several recipes for coconut macaroons, and given my love for chocolate, I have tried drizzling them with chocolate. But I got to thinking that they would be even better if the chocolate was on the inside, so I set out to make a chocolate chip, pecan & coconut macaroon! Sounds good right? Well, the final version was, but there is a reason that this post is entitled Take Two!

I started with coconut and chopped pecans.

Then I mixed in the semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Looking good, right?

Now for another of my grandmother’s favorite ingredients, sweetened condensed milk. (She used to give me a spoon and let me eat the leftover sweetened milk right out of the can. I think she always left a little extra just for me.)

I wanted to make sure that the vanilla was evenly distributed, so I mixed it with the milk rather than stirring it directly into the coconut mixture. At this point, I wanted to revert to childhood and just eat this luscious mixture right out of the can!

But I was good and stirred it into the coconut. (I did save a little extra for a taste. After all, who really wants to grow up?)

Using a spatula, I mixed the sweetened condensed milk with the coconut mixture until it was evenly distributed.

Now for the egg whites. Using my stand mixture, I beat the egg whites until they formed peaks.

See, the peak holds it shape.b

Now the goal was to fold the egg whites into the coconut without deflating them too much.

Using a small scoop, I placed mounds of coconut, chocolate, and pecans on parchment paper and put them in the oven to bake.

To my chagrin, the mounds started spreading out!

Don’t get me wrong, they tasted fine. But they didn’t look right and the bottom edges had no coconut, chocolate or pecans. So Take One was ok, but not what I wanted. Time for Take Two. I increased the amount of coconut, pulsed the coconut in the food processor to break it up a little (making the final cookie chewy but not too stringy), added a little flour, chilled the dough, and then scooped little mounds onto another parchment layered baking sheet.

I also experimented with rolling some of the cookies into a ball (bottom row below) rather than leaving them free-form (top row below).

I couldn’t help peaking in the oven as they baked—hoping liquid didn’t ooze out of these cookies. Take a look at the cookies below! Take Two made a huge difference.

Bake a batch of these, grab some milk, and think of your grandmother. I am pretty sure my grandmother wouldn’t hav minded the chocolate in these.

For the Take Two recipe for Chocolate, Pecan & Coconut Macaroons, click here.

Chocolate Chip, Pecan & Coconut Macaroons—Take Two