Orange-Coconut Macaroons: or, Success by vexation

Ever felt like a recipe was defying you?

Macaroons 2 egg whites ⅛ tsp salt ½ tsp cream of tartar ¾ cup sugar ½ cup flour 1 tbsp butter, melted 2 cups coconut flakes 6 oz chocolate chips 1 tsp grated orange rind 1 tsp vanilla Heat oven to 325°. Have pans lined with ungreased parchment paper. When you're measuring the coconut, lightly spoon it into the cup. Do not pack it down. Divide the sugar in half. Sift half of it with the flour twice. (The repeated sifting will help ensure they're very well-mixed.) Beat egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt until foamy. Gradually add the other half of the sugar, beating the whole time. Beat until it forms very soft peaks. Do not beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. You want them to be thick and creamy. Carefully fold in the flour and sugar. Then fold in the rest of the ingredients. Drop by spoonfuls onto the baking sheet, leaving room for them to spread. Bake 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden on top. Store in a tightly sealed container. The orange flavor strengthens overnight. Note: These are also good if you replace the orange rind and chocolate chips with about one-third cup of chopped pecans and a generous splash of almond extract. Source: anonymous recipe card

Bonus recipe: Coconut Clusters These are a lot easier than the original recipe. In the above recipe, omit the chocolate chips. If desired, replace the orange rind with the flavoring of your choice. Stir together the sugar, salt, and flour, breaking up any flour lumps. Mix in the unbeaten egg whites and melted butter, stirring until smooth. Then mix in the coconut, along with the flavoring of your choice. Drop by small spoonfuls onto the baking sheet. You can neaten the cookies' shape if desired, by patting them with either your finger dipped in water or a wet spoon. Then bake as above. Note: If using orange rind (or any other citrus), rub it against the sugar to draw out the flavor. (You can't do this in the original recipe since the rind oils would deflate the whipped egg whites.)

This came up on a discussion thread of people sharing old hand-me-down recipes. I shared our graham-coconut cake, which wasn't so much handed down as it was inherited by decluttering. Someone else posted this one and said half the ingredients are incorrect, but they know how the recipe is supposed to go. (When someone hands you a recipe in person, you get more details than when you merely find a scrap in a box.) I asked "So what is it supposed to say?" They responded with this:

"That 'rind' is zest, and not from a lemon. You only want the whites. Use the yolks for something else. Custard, making brownies richer, toss them in a spicy ramen... whatever."

I promptly decided to divert some of the household coconut away from my original plans and make macaroons instead. 

The directions seemed easy enough: mix everything, then whip the egg whites and fold them in. And so, with foolish confidence, I mixed the flour and the sugar. The sugar broke up the flour clumps, as I knew it would. Our egg whites whipped up beautifully because electric mixers are wonderful. The rest of the ingredients all fell into place so easily I should have been suspicious. Soon, it was time to ruin everything.

The first spoonful of egg whites deflated on contact with everything else. "No matter," I said to myself, "We just need to be patient and gradually add the rest!" I was wrong. The cream of tartar and pinch of salt that I had added to the egg whites proved futile. Our allegedly finished dough looked deflated and quite dead. 

The chocolate chips kept falling out no matter how much I tried to mix them back in. I could have rinsed them and put them back into the bag to reuse later. It is always a bad sign when your cookies can't hold themselves together. 

At this point, I reexamined the recipe card. Had I mismeasured or forgotten something? Was an important ingredient left off of the card entirely? After a lot of frustrated consideration, I decided I had misinterpreted one of the lines written across the ingredients. See that arrow pointing to the words "fold in"? Note how the line "¾ c sugar" is not included in it. Instead, the sugar is free-floating between "beat until foamy 5-7 mins" and "fold in."

 

The next time I tried this, I beat all the sugar into the egg whites, whereupon they collapsed. It seems like egg whites have a maximum amount of sugar they can take before your meringue is ruined. If you keep your sugar allowance in the safe zone, you can get fearsomely sharp peaks like this: 

Remember when we made kisses?

But if you add too much sugar, your egg whites turn into what looks like limp gravy, and no amount of extended beating will whip them back up. We ended up violently chucking our white glop to the municipal hereafter.

After a lot of exasperated recipe testing (punctuated by profanity), we landed on mixing half the sugar with the flour (to break up any flour lumps) and beating half the sugar with the egg. We also learned we absolutely must not mix the orange rind with the sugar, even though we normally do that to bring out its flavor. You see, orange rind has oils in it, as seen here:

Scattered on the plate between the little shreds of orange peel, you can see  LITTLE DROPS OF TREACHERY.

As we all know, the tiniest micro-drop of fat can ruin your meringue and lead you to dump an entire bowl of failed egg whites into the trash while cursing so loudly that the neighbors' impressionable children will learn new words while playing outside.

But after many (many!) mishaps, we had finally made a successful cookie dough. And so, with wonderful ease that suggested I had gotten the recipe right this time, I dropped the cookies onto the waiting pan. Every last chocolate chip stayed in place. Our cookies-to-be looked like cute lumpy clouds that, most importantly, actually held onto their own ingredients. After baking, they had puffed up beautifully.

If we zoom in on one of them, we can truly appreciate the crispy outer crust with its little cracks that hint at the soft, airy interior.

Before my frustration overruled my aversion to flinging food into the garbage, I dropped a few plops of the failed cookie dough onto a pan. Since the oven was already hot, I figured it was no extravagance. And the resulting cookies were better than I expected. They even look good until you compare them to what they're supposed to be.

You might think that unleavened cookies would be a tooth-cracking mess, but these were not. I made another batch without even trying to beat the egg white stiff first, just to see if it would work. Since the chocolate chips kept falling out, I spared myself stress and expense and omitted them. And instead of attempting any egg white peaks (stiff or otherwise), I mixed everything together. This was partially out of curiosity, and partially so I could try to come up with a really easy recipe to post under the finicky one.

After so many failed batches of stiff peaks and sad cookies, I really needed something you just dump into a bowl and stir. As a bonus to add to the bonus recipe, you don't need to worry about getting a little bit of yolk into the egg whites.

Unlike the chocolate chips, the coconut mixed right and showed no signs of falling back out. At this point, I really wanted these cookies to work because they were so easy.

I tried piping the coconut clusters into cute little shapes, but I got indistinct mounds instead. So if you don't want to bother with a piping bag (or the guilt over the residual dough that gets left behind), you can just spoon-drop them instead.

To my surprise, the unleavened clusters actually puffed up a little bit. In fact, they looked downright cute. And they were soft, dense, and wonderfully well-loaded with coconut. The "official" recipe is better if you get it right, but I'd recommend making these instead unless you're open to mishaps. I'll even go so far as to say the coconut clusters are surprisingly tough competition for the icing macarooons.

 

But let's get back to the original recipe. After many failed batches, we managed a successful one. And because I hate to give out a dud recipe, I made them again to ensure it wasn't a fluke. 

These cookies are really rich in one of the best ways you can imagine. Because of this, they're great to bring to a gathering when you don't want to make like 9 dozen cookies. Everyone will love them, but they will also be quickly sated.