(This post is the last installment of a three part series. To read the first post, click here.)
Two of the three cookies for the TED cookie drop were both crisp and chocolate free (gasp!) so the third cookie had to be chewy, have some chocolate bits and still needed to fit the Halloween theme. Hmm, a conundrum. Thumbing through my current cookie bible, Martha Stewart's Cookies, I saw it: a coconut macaroon with chocolate chunks. Perfect - except that having chocolate chunks on the outside isn't particularly spooky and has nothing to do with Halloween. Hmm, but what if I made a center core of coconut/chocolate bits, covered it with a plain macaroon mixture and then stuck some chocolate chips in for eyes? Oh, yeah.
I can't say it was the fastest endeavor or super easy (the eyes kept sticking to my fingers and not the coconut) but the results were worth the extra effort. If you want to omit the chocolate chip core and just make plain macaroons with chocolate eyes, that would probably save you some time but then there's no chocolate chip core so where's the fun in that?
CHOCOLATE CHIP MACAROON OWLS
adapted from Martha Stewart Cookies
makes 40 owls
5 cups unsweetened coconut
1-1/4 cup sugar
4 large egg whites
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8-teaspoon salt
40 bittersweet chocolate chips plus an additional 3/4-cup
Move oven racks to the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Get a small bowl of water ready (to dip your hand and scoop into).
With a sharp knife, cut the 40 chocolate chips in half; keep the pairs together.
In a large bowl, combine coconut, sugar, egg whites, vanilla extract, and salt with your hands. Divide mixture 40/60 and put the smaller quantity in a separate bowl. Add the remaining 3/4-cup of chocolate chips to the smaller quantity and stir to combine. Using a tablespoon or (ideally) a mini ice cream scoop, scoop out the chocolate chip/coconut mixture; pressing the mixture into the scoop with wet fingers. Carefully plop out onto one of your parchment-lined cookie sheets. Continue until there's no chocolate chip/coconut mixture remaining.
Using the same scoop, gather up a VERY loose scoopful (volume wise, it should be about half the amount of each chocolate chip ball), and place it on water-dipped, finger tips. Spread the mixture out to about a 2-inch diameter and invert one of the chocolate chip/coconut balls onto it. Carefully close your hand to smush the plain coconut onto the ball, covering any visible chocolate chips from the core. Invert onto the second cookie sheet and massage the ball into a flat-bottomed sphere. Take one set of eyes and press them into the coconut with your thumbs, pinching the coconut above the eyes with your index fingers to make a brow. I angled the eyes down in the center to make them look like they’re scowling. Continue until you've used up all the remaining coconut and eyes, spacing the owls about an inch or so from one another.
Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the brows turns brown, turning once and flipping positions. Let cool on cookies sheets. Enjoy and hoooot!