Almond Joy Coconut Macaroons

On Sunday, I was cooking something with coconut oil, and my little brother, Michael, look at me and said, “You know, ever since you’ve gotten hear, I’ve actually started liking coconut.” I was so excited to hear this. Coconut is seriously one of my favorite flavors, and it makes me sad that a lot of people turn their noses to it. It adds such an interesting flavor, and often times, texture, to food, and is just oh-s0-delicious. Obviously, I love coconut oil, but all things coconut are great in my book.

As it would make sense, Almond Joy is one of my favorite candy bars. I always love the sweetness of the coconut, and the “surprise” of the almond inside. I haven’t had one forever, since I try to avoid most chocolate and dairy, but when I was at Target the other day…I just really wanted something sweet and chocolate-y. So when we walked past the candy aisle, I saw a bag of Almond Joy bites. I quickly justified buying them and ate a bunch on the way home.  Which ended up being a bad idea. So Forrest, being the wonderful guy he is, suggested we come up with a recipe that would use the rest of them, so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the rest. We decided on coconut macaroons.

This was SUCH a good idea. Well, kind of. Because the whole plan to get rid of the Almond Joy bites before I ate them all, actually resulted in my eating probably way more than I should have. But that’s okay, I’m pretty sure it was worth it, because something amazing came of it.  We’ve made two batches of these in the past few days, and they didn’t last more than an hour or so. And you want to know the true test of me claiming these to be amazing? The fact that my mom, who really, really  doesn’t like coconut, actually loved these. And my sister, Diana, who is the same way? She loved them too!

I think the trick to making these so good is using unsweetened, flaked coconut. We got some at Sprouts, and it was some of the best coconut I’ve ever cooked with. The cookies were sweet, so omitting the sweetened coconut that I often buy really helped to make it not a sugar overdose. They were so easy, too!

Plus, doesn’t this look cool?

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Almond Joy Coconut Macaroons

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Ingredients

• 1-1/3 cups flaked coconut
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• Shake of salt
• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup Almond Joy pieces + 16 pieces, for inside of cookies
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together coconut, sugar, flour, and salt. Add in egg whites and vanilla, and mix until no dryness exists and dough can be formed into small balls.
3. To make cookies, take a small piece of the dough, place one Almond Joy bite in the middle, and roll into a ball (about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.) Place on well-greased cookie sheet and repeat until cookie sheet is full. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until the tops start to brown.
4. Place cookies on a wire cooling rack. While they cool, crush up the 1/2 cup of Almond Joy bites until they are in tiny pieces, and then melt together with the 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips. Immediately dip the macaroons in the mixture. When done doing this to all the macaroons, place in refrigerator for about an hour.