donut pan idea no. 44: coconut macaroons for easter + passover

This is one of the top three ideas suggested to me for the donut pan project, right after soap and candles. Coconut macaroons! They've been on our master list since last summer. These are easy and really delicious. You can serve them up plain or dipped in chocolate for Passover, or decorate them like little nests with candy for Easter.

Click on "read more" down below to read more!

I've adapted one of Martha Stewart's macaroon recipes, this one that adds sweetened condensed milk. I also used an idea I learned from my friend Heather: juicing berries! I had never thought of juicing berries before, only blending them into smoothies. She juiced strawberries for this strawberry milk that sounded so good I decided to try raspberry juice for this recipe. The juice is optional here, but it does taste really good and colors the coconut a lovely pink-lilac color. A half-pint container of raspberries yields just a few tablespoons of juice, which was perfect for this recipe, but it's a little wasteful, so I saved the still-juicy pulp for muffins we made the next day.

This recipe yields ten coconut macaroons (six regular and four raspberry). You will need 1 egg white, a pinch of salt, 1 tsp. vanilla, 7 oz. sweetened condensed milk, 14 oz. sweetened shredded coconut and 2 tbsp. raspberry juice from 1/2 pint of raspberries (optional). You will also need baking spray for the pans, and a variety of egg-shaped candies and Peeps if desired.

Jelly beans would be been fun, too!

Start by preheating your oven to 300º and spraying two donut pans with baking spray. In a medium bowl, whisk egg white and salt together until frothy, about two minutes. Gently fold in vanilla and condensed milk, then fold in coconut and carefully stir until well combined.

Fill one prepared donut pan (six donut cavities) with the coconut mixture. Don't press down too hard, and keep the tops a little fluffy and loose looking. The mixture should be higher than the top of the pan by about 1/4".

There should be enough remaining mixture for four more donuts. Here's where I mixed in 2 tbsp. of fresh raspberry juice. Of course you can experiment with different amounts. You would probably need 4 tbsp. of raspberry juice to give the whole batch of macaroons a nice pastel hue.

Fill the remaining four donut cavities, and set both pans in your 300º oven. Start watching them around 20 minutes, but mine took 30 minutes to really set up. The bottoms only slightly caramelized, but they never hardened. The edges will be golden brown. 

Let them cool completely in the pans set on cooling racks. When cool, they should peel out of the pans very easily after a quick trip around the rims with a knife.

Looks good, right? SOOOO good. David doesn't even like coconut and he couldn't get over these.

If you're going to decorate the macaroons for Easter, grab your candies and have fun!

I didn't dip these in chocolate (as many people have suggested) because I was already decorating them with candy, but they would be really great that way. I love the fact these would be great little desserts for either a Passover or Easter get-together. Happy happy!