Day 18 - Coconut Macaroons

I needed a quick and easy recipe tonight as I was dragging after a busy day at work.  Thankfully, Marissa was rested and ready to go when I got home.  This recipe has just a couple of ingredients but so delicious.  If you love coconut, this recipe is for you!  It is just loaded with chewy coconut goodness.  We added a chocolate drizzle to half of the cookies and a caramel drizzle to the other half.  Again, I had a simple caramel recipe from a salted caramel macaroon recipe, but the caramel didn't work.  So I used some left over caramel from the refrigerator that Greg had made for a caramel apple pie he made at Thanksgiving.  It was perfect.  I think I might give up trying caramel recipes that appear so simple. They never seem to work.

Ingredients:

1 (14 ounce) can Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 to 1 and 1/2 teaspoons almond extract (I omitted as some don't like almond flavor)
2 (7 ounce) packages of flaked coconut (5 and 1/3 cups)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line baking sheets with Reynolds release foil.

In a large bowl, combine Eagle brand, vanilla extract and almond extract (if used).  Stir in coconut.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto foil-lined cookie sheets, with a spoon, slightly flattening each mound.  We used a small cookie scoop to get them all the same size.

Bake 15 to 17 minutes or until golden.  Remove from baking sheets, cool on wire rack.  Store loosely covered at room temperature or freeze.

The recipe says you can add a Hershey kiss in the center of each macaroon immediately after baking.  I have done this for years and it works well.  This year we did a chocolate drizzle instead just to make them look a little fancier.  The chocolate drizzle is made just by melting chocolate chips in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between.  Put melted chocolate in plastic piping bag and cut the tip just a little to drizzle.