Coconut Macarooners!

I love all things coconut and have been looking at making the macaroons in the Flour cookbook for a while.  When Nick and I were responsible for bringing a dessert to a party it proved to be the perfect excuse to make them!  The post's title is from when Cookie Monster was auditioning for SNL on Facebook and he impersonated McGruber, calling himself Macarooner - too funny!  While these cookies tasted pretty good, they did not come out looking the way they were supposed to.  So here is the story of how I made the cookies that tasted great (people confirmed that!), but with some places noted where things did not turn out the way they maybe should have!

Macaroons!

Not having looked at a Macaroon recipe before, I was surprised to see how this one actually seemed doable and did not require too many ingredients.  To begin, I first had to make the pastry cream.

Necessities for the Pastry Cream

I put the milk in a saucepan until it started to simmer, and separately I combined the dry ingredients in a large bowl.  According to the cookbook, mixing the sugar with the rest of the dry ingredients will prevent clumping when adding the egg yolks.

Dry Ingredients

Once all combined, I stirred the whisked egg yolks into the dry ingredients.

Adding the egg yolks

Once it was all whisked together it was supposed to become pasty, however mine was a little less pasty (really, more crumbly) than I think it should have been.  Once the milk had reached the bubbly stage, I slowly added it to the egg yolk mixture.

Once fully combined I returned the mixture to the saucepan, over medium heat and whisked my little heart out for the next minute until the mixture came to a boil.

I then removed the pot from the heat and stirred in the vanilla, covered the mixture in plastic and let the whole thing cool completely. 

Cooling pastry cream

Once the pastry cream was fully cooled, I set to work on finishing the cookies. 

Best of the rest...

I put the pastry cream, sugar, coconut, salt and egg whites in a large bowl and combined.

Final Necessities

All stirred up

Once again, Joanne Chang gives helpful tips in the recipe.  In this case, the finished "dough" can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days!  Not wanting to wait that long because the party was later the same day, I forged ahead.  Using a tablespoon, I spooned the dough out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.  This is where I noticed that something wasn't quite right - the egg whites seemed to be seeping out and forming a ring around the cookie dough mound.  Since I had made it this far, I kept going - still loads of good coconut.  Once the sheet was filled, I put it into a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.  

Almost there...

As you can tell, the little ring cooked right around the cookie.  I let them cool a bit on the sheet and then I moved them to the cooling rack.

Out of the oven, with the rings...

When I tasted one of the cookies (I mean I had to!), they actually tasted pretty good - sticky, but tasty!  Not really believing it, I had to have Nick confirm, which he did!  They may have been ugly, but they tasted pretty good.

Cooling cookies

In an effort to salvage the cookies, I cut off the weird ring around the cookie, plated them and they were ready to go.  The people at the party enjoyed them too, not even noticing that they looked a bit off - its amazing what a nice serving dish will do.  While these were more or less a success in taste, I still have some work to do on the construction of the cookie.  So, in an effort to perfect the Coconut Macaroon, I will have to make them a few more times.  Good thing I love coconut!

Anyone there with thoughts on what went wrong here??