Recipe - Chocolate Dipped Macaroons

How about something sweet and just sinful? I just LOVE cookies. They almost always give the sense of 'satisfaction' that I love to have from a fresh baked good. They are usually salty some how, buttery in another and savory all in one. This recipe was found on the GlutenFreeda website under Macaroons but I have made a couple of edits to it like the fact that these are more like a coconut meringue then a macaroon but I promise you'll like these over the store bought macaroons! The page linked above for the cookies you can even see my comment on the recipe and how long ago it was that I first made these :P

Ingredients
4 large egg whites
1 ts vanilla extract
1 cup powdered sugar
2 cup finally shredded coconut
1/2 cup GF flour mix
1 cup dark or milk chocolate, melted (optional, dark works better though)

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 325f or 160c. I have found that if you can find a silicone baking sheet (you know those really soft sheets that almost feel like slippery rubber under you touch... they are making all sorts of molds for the oven out of them as well) that this works the BEST for this recipe. If you don't have or can't find one of these sheets, you just end up having to grease and flour your cookie sheet and repeat the process of it with each sheet of cookies baked. With the silicone baking sheet, you don't need any grease or flouring processes.

With an electric mixer, beat egg whites until stiff peaks start to form. You want the beginning process of meringue when you are finished beating them. Add vanilla extract and mix well. Add powdered sugar slowly, I suggest no more then 1/4th cup at a time. Mixing still with the electric mixture, making sure to mix the sugar in very well before adding more. Don't reduce the sugar in this recipe, it needs it and you will not notice there is an entire cup of it in the end.

Fold in the coconut and GF flour to the now prepared egg whites. Do this gently as you want to keep as much of the air in the egg whites as possible but make sure you coat the coconut well.

Drop batter (egg white mixture with coconut) by rounded teaspoons on your cookie sheet. You can add more to the sheet then you normally would if you were making other drop cookies. These will puff out a bit but they won't 'spread' like normal drop cookies. You can add spoon fulls in the middle of the rows as well (see photos).

Bake in pre-heated oven for 25mins or until set and just starting to turn light brown. It is VERY easy to over bake this cookie! Be careful to keep a watch on them about 20mins into it. Ovens vary a great deal when it comes to this cookie so you must watch toward the end to ensure this doesn't happen. You can see in one of the photos how easy it is, the cookies that are a bit darker were less then 5mins longer then the rest.

Remove cookies and let rest for 5 to 10mins so they are able to set a bit. Do NOT try to remove these cookies before they are set or they will lose their form completely. Once removed, they are ready to eat as is (and are just sinful if eaten while still warm!) but this recipe calls to chocolate coat them.

Once cooled, drip them any way you want into the melted chocolate. I usually do the bottom of them but the recipe on the site also shows dipping the 'side' of it. It all depends how much chocolate you want on them. You can even dip the entire cookie if you really want to be sinful or choose to place some chocolate between 2 cookies to make a sandwich and then dip them both on their side. It is how ever you want to do them.

Place dipped cookies on wax paper (on a plate, cookie sheet or what ever but on something hard) and place in the fridge until chocolate is hard. I suggest keeping these in the fridge until you want to eat them. Rest them 30mins outside of the fridge if you don't like cold cookies or chocolate but they will start to melt a bit. They get messy with the chocolate on them :D