Coconut Macaroons (GBBO Technical 2)

 

This week's technical bake announcement was another groan-inducing revelation. Coconut Macaroons? Ew? I've never had coconut anything that I like, or can even really stomach. Of course this year would be the year of bakes with flavors we don't like. But I had already committed to doing the bakes, so I wasn't about to give up just over the coconut. 

Prue's recipe (find it here) begins with making a mango curd. While I've made lemon curd many times at this point, mango curd (and cooking with mango in general) was new to me. Unfortunately, the mango I got at the store was not quite ripe, and so my mango puree was more of a finely diced mango. The curd still turned out, but it wasn't smooth like you would expect:

It may not be smooth, but at least it tastes good! Next up, blitzing the shredded coconut, and adding in condensed milk, almond extract, and rice flour. 

Then add beaten egg whites...

It was difficult to fold in the egg whites gently because of how heavy the coconut mixture was. The cookies themselves were not as tall or as rounded as they were on the show, so I think I could have done a better job here.

Next up, I was to pipe them out onto a cookie sheet. Now, some of the bakers in the episode were told by the judges that they processed their coconut too long and that there wasn't enough texture left. Knowing that, I made sure to leave some texture to the coconut when I was blitzing it, and that meant that the nozzle I tried to use to pipe out the circles turned out to be too small for the coconut mixture to come out of. Whoops. So I used a spoon and my hands to shape the macaroons.

The six chocolate ones have a little chocolate square baked into the middle...

Then I covered the chocolate with more coconut and put them in the oven! I baked them for 30 minutes, until the edges were golden. 

They came off the pan easily to cool on the cookie sheets.

Once cool, I spooned in the mango curd, drizzled the chocolate ones with some more melted chocolate, and we were ready to eat them. 

My parents were visiting, and neither of them are coconut fans either, but we all found them to be surprisingly good. The coconut taste was not strong, and the chocolate and the mango really helped to lend other flavor to it. I believe the mango ones were the preferred ones by the group of us, but the chocolate ones seemed slightly more balanced since there was chocolate in each bite. As mentioned above, they were not as tall or domed as they should have been, and the curd was far from technically perfect. However, I think they turned out pretty well and they definitely tasted better than I expected. This recipe is naturally gluten free, so while I don't think I will ever find myself craving these, I may make these again if I need a dessert for my gluten free family members. All in all, I'm glad I tried them despite being worried we wouldn't like them.