Coconut Haters Beware ☺

Madelyn was here today and baked some delicious Coconut Macaroon cookies! She found the recipe in a recipe book my mother-in-law gave me a while back. I was skeptical because this recipe doesn't call for eggs or baking powder or any of the usual cookie ingredients, but they turned out great and I ate quite a few! They tasted kind of like a coconut cream pie to me. One more thing -- we were in a time crunch so we had to take them out of the oven 7 minutes early. They were still great! So I'm not sure how crunchy or gooey they are supposed to be, but they were just fine to us.

Coconut Macaroons

1/3 C all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 1/2 cups dried coconut
2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with waxed paper and grease the paper. (We took all but two of the cookies off the waxed paper right after they came out of the oven - the two left on the wax paper to cool got very stuck!)

Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the dried coconut. Pour in the sweetened condensed milk. Add the vanilla extract and stir together from the center. Continue stirring until a very thick batter is formed.

Drop heaping tablespoonfuls of batter 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake the macaroons for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

VARIATION: (we didn't try this) Make the macaroons smaller, and when cooked coat them in melted semisweet chocolate. Place on waxed paper and leave until the chocolate is hard.