Georgian Inspired Coconut Macaroons

During my Sister Bip's visit this year, we went to the beautiful estate of Petworth. We've visited before, but only the park. This time we planned ahead and went early, so were also able to go into the house as well. Most interesting for me were the kitchens, which were set up the way they were in the Georgian era and there were a number of ladies dressed up and demonstrating various activities that would have been done then. Very exciting, because they were baking different biscuits and were also giving out recipes, so I quickly grabbed one.

From the four recipes, the one I had all the ingredients for was the coconut macaroons, so that's the one I made to take into work the following day. So it was quite good that although the recipe stated it would make 24, I got 36 of these.

Ingredients

4 large egg whites
115 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
&188; tsp salt
170 g desiccated coconut
100 g dark chocolate for decoration

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C and line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites, sugar, vanilla extract and salt to stiff peaks stage of a meringue.
3. Carefully fold in the coconut to distribute it evenly within the meringue.
4. Using two tablespoons, make quenelles of about 3 cm length and place onto the baking sheets, allowing some 5 cm space between them.
5. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until they go golden on top and look dry on the surface.
6. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, the carefully transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.
7. When all macaroons have cooled completely, melt the dark chocolate. It's not necessary to temper the choclate.
8. Place in a small piping bag, cut a tiny hole then pipe over all the macaroons and let set.
9. Store the macaroons in an airtight container, layered between pieces of baking paper.

These turned out very similar to the Swedish coconut tops I've made before, but a variant without yolks. However, these were very sticky. Tasty none the less and although the chocolate wasn't in the recipe leaflet, it did make them even nicer.

I actually piped the mixture, but this didn't work very well, as the meringue reverted back to liquid and separated somewhat, so the macaroons became runnier towards the end. I've added a note about this at the bottom on the leaflet with an exclamation mark. I've also written to use a silicone mat rather than baking paper. I do have one, but I don't think I've ever used it, I'll need to see if I can find it.

Lundulph and I shared one of these, the rest I packed up and took to work on my first day of my new job. They were popular despite their stickiness and Lundulph was a bit sad that there weren't any left over for him.