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Coconut Macaroons
1 egg-white 1 1/4 cups sweet coconut 1/3 cup thick condensed milk 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Beat the egg-white until stiff, then fold it into the mixture of coconut and condensed milk. Add flavoring. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased baking-sheet and shape into cakes. Bake in a moderate oven 350 degrees F. until lightly browned.
A three-ingredient macaroon of the kind that spread through American cookbooks once canned sweetened condensed milk was in every pantry. The original gives no time or yield, so those are the main gaps to fill.
- "Thick condensed milk"This means sweetened condensed milk from the can, not evaporated milk. Evaporated milk is unsweetened and far thinner; it will not bind the coconut and the mounds will spread into lace.
- "Sweet coconut"Sweetened shredded or flaked coconut, moist and packaged. If you use unsweetened desiccated coconut the macaroons will be noticeably drier and much less sweet; a scant tablespoon of sugar folded in helps, though the texture stays coarser.
- Oven350F as written is correct and needs no adjustment. Bake on the middle rack.
- TimeExpect 12 to 16 minutes. "Lightly browned" means the shred tips and edges have colored while the interior is still soft; coconut goes from golden to bitter quickly, so watch the last three minutes.
- Fold, do not stirThere is no chemical leavening here; the beaten white is what lightens the mixture, though folding it into thick coconut and condensed milk knocks much of the air out again. Combine the coconut and condensed milk first, then cut the white through with a few strokes rather than beating it in.
- Baking sheetA greased sheet works but these are very sugary and can weld themselves down. Parchment is easier, and lift them off while still slightly warm rather than fully cooled.
- Shaping"Shape into cakes" means pressing each spoonful into a neat mound with damp fingers or two spoons. They hold whatever shape you give them.
- YieldAbout 12 to 15 small macaroons from one egg white. The recipe doubles and triples cleanly.
Coconut macaroons descend from the older almond macaroon, an egg-white-and-ground-nut confection generally traced to Italian convent baking and long popular at Passover because it uses no flour. The coconut version is usually described as an American reworking, helped along by shredded coconut sold in packages rather than hacked from the shell, which reached American groceries in the late nineteenth century, and by canned sweetened condensed milk, commercially available from the 1850s. The traditional macaroon depends on beaten whites and sugar for structure; here the condensed milk supplies both sugar and binder, so a single egg white and about a minute of mixing produce the whole batch.