A World Without Wheat....Coconut Snowballs on a Snowy Day!

Sometimes baking at my house is a bit like Chopped, that hit show on Food Network where you have to use the ingredients handed to you to whip up something tasty in a ridiculously short period of time.  Luckily I had all the time I needed.  My things on hand were one and a half bags of flaked coconut, a small amount of cream cheese and an egg white languishing in the fridge. What to do, what to bake?  I had never made macaroons before, not sure why, but just never got around to it.  Luckily I had more or less everything on hand to make it.  Crazy easy recipe and only one substituion was necessar: I swapped the cream of coconut out for the can of coconut milk currently in my pantry. 

I think this is an easy and fun recipe to make with your kids.  The bonus is they are so tasty you would never guess they are GF.  I am betting any gf flour mix would work, if you are a wheat eater I am sure you could use that…

So…celebrate the white stuff today and whip up some coconut macaroons.  Your family will thank you and this recipe will use up that bag of coconut that has been lurking in the back of the fridge since you used a bit in a cookie recipe weeks ago!

Coconut Macaroons

 Ingredients:

10 or 11 oz sweetened flaked coconut; divided; 7 oz and 3-4 oz for dip

2/3 c confectioner’s sugar

¼ c coconut milk

1 oz cream cheese

3 tbsp. gf flour mix ( I use my standard brown rice mix)

1 large egg white

1 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch salt

Directions:

Chop 7 oz of coconut (an entire 7 oz bag) in food processor with the sugar – spin one minute until fairly pulverized. Add all the other ingredients except second amount of coconut and blend well until it is a squishy mess of a dough!

Pour that other 3-4 oz of coconut into a low wide bowl.

Take two cookie sheets and cover with foil and spray with Pam, the GF version.  Heat oven to 325 degrees and place the racks in the center slots.

Scoop up balls of dough with a teaspoon and roll them around in the flakes until well covered. I used a second spoon to accomplish that with a minimum of gooey mess….  Plop the flaky balls (they are fragile so be gentle) onto the foiled cookie sheets, about 1 ½ inches apart.  Bake 20 minutes until light golden.  Remove from sheet with metal spatula and cool on wire racks.  Store in cookie jar or Tupperware.  Your kids will devour them so they won’t last more than a day or two.  It makes about 25-28 cookies.

I plan to make a curry with the rest of that coconut milk.  I wonder if you could use it in a milk shake or an Indian fish chowder?  Decisions decisions…. I feel another Chopped cooking spell coming on!