Food makes up for a lot you guys (photo courtesy of Elena)
What is the perfect present to give on a budget?
Answer: food!
What are the things Dmitry likes to eat?
- Tea
- Anything with coconut
- Tea
- things to eat with tea
- steak
- berries
Solution: coconut cookies. If you have ever been to a Passover seder you are probably familiar with coconut macaroons, and they seemed like the perfect thing.
this kind, not the French kind
Our anniversary is in early January. It’s May.
These are very belated cookies.
I kept getting busy and putting them off – I know, not very nice. In my defense we did exchange other gifts, so it wasn’t like I forgot completely. But still.
See, we went to the aquarium
sting rays are so romantic
I finally got my act together after seeing smitten kitchen’s recipe for raspberry macaroons. It turns out my aunt had made them for seder and they received rave reviews. How could I resist? More importantly, how could he resist?
So this weekend I got to work.
Picture courtesy of my talented roommate
These cookies are very good – chewy and tangy, with a nice texture. The recipe is pretty easy and the ingredients are cheap aside from the raspberries. If you feel like an indulgence, this would be a good choice.
Raspberry Coconut Macaroons
ingredients
- 1 package of sweetened flaked coconut (2 cups)
- 6 0z raspberries, fresh if at all possible
- 3 egg whites
- 1/3 – 1/2 cup white sugar
For this you need a blender or a food processor. I suppose you could do it by hand but it would probably be more effort than it was worth unless you really like macaroons.
Preheat the oven to 325°
Put the coconut in the blender. Pulse it so that it’s mostly broken up – you will probably have to blend it a few times, stirring it around in between. Add the sugar and the egg whites, blend until combined. You can add sugar to taste – the recipe called for 2/3 cup and I found them to be overly sweet.
Add the raspberries. Blend until the raspberries are mostly broken up. If you want you can take about half of the coconut mixture out beforehand and only add the fruit to half of the mixture – if you do this you can make pretty marbled cookies, but I didn’t bother.
Get a cookie tray and cover it with parchment paper*
*parchment paper is good for baking cookies and bread. If you don’t have it you can lightly grease the pan, but if you’re baking a lot it’s nice to have around.
Using a spoon, scoop the mixture onto the tray, forming them into little “haystacks” of about 1 inch.
pop them in the oven for 18-25 minutes. and then boom!
It’s cheesy but it went over well
deliciousness!
verdict: YUM
They may have been late, but Dmitry didn’t seem to mind.
two days later and they were all. gone.
happy anniversary!
(the other photos look a wee bit unappatizing, so use your imagination! or just go to smitten kitchen’s website)
collegekitschin 