This week’s SMS was chosen by Ellen of Blue Tree Green Heart: chocolate orange macaroons. After having spent two glorious weeks house sitting for my in-laws, I returned home on Friday and these macaroons had the honor of being the first thing I baked in my own kitchen. As I mentioned the other day, my in-laws have a wonderful kitchen with lots of counter space so it wasn’t tough being there, but there’s just something so comforting and familiar about being back in the place I know so well.
These macaroons were a terrific recipe to ease me back into the swing of things at home. With an ingredient list containing only 5 items and instructions that didn’t call for any equipment besides a bowl and my hands, it was almost perfect. The one exception was the dreaded “finely chop the chocolate” instruction, the one thing I detest more than just about anything else when it comes to baking. Once I got past that hurdle, though, it was smooth sailing.
I wonder though if I was the only one who was concerned just a bit about mixing the entire recipe by hand. The final step calls for adding egg whites to the finely chopped chocolate, sugar, orange zest and coconut and using your hands to distribute them evenly. I had visions of unevenly mixed dough that wouldn’t hold together because of my inability to coat everything with the egg whites. My fears seemed unfounded at first as I found it surprisingly easy to distribute the egg whites. As I began to scoop the dough, however, I noticed the cookies weren’t staying together as well as I’d have liked. I reshaped several of them, trying to pack the dough as best I could with my VERY sticky hands. A few of my cookies fell apart in the oven so I guess I didn’t pack them well enough! Most of them did stay together though so I can’t complain too much.
I made half of this recipe (weighing the egg whites and using 45 g as the total weight) and wound up with 12 macaroons. I used the zest of an entire orange instead of halving it so my macaroons would have lots of orange flavor. As for the chocolate, I used a 60% bittersweet – it was the closest I had on hand to the 58% semisweet called for in the recipe. Though I do like coconut, I have to confess that I’m not much of a macaroon person. I’ll be sharing these with my mom on Monday, but in the interest of having something to say about the macaroons in this post, I took a few bites of one of them. They were chewy and quite sweet, though the sweetness was tempered a bit by the bittersweet chocolate. The orange flavor was really prominent in mine, but since I used double the amount of orange zest, that wasn’t terribly shocking nor was it a bad thing. Citrus zest is yummy! I’ll reserve judgment as to whether the recipe is worthy of a repeat until I get some feedback from my mom, hopefully she’ll enjoy them!
Many thanks to Ellen for hosting this week! She will have the recipe on her blog, or you can find it on page 74 of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book.
Chocolate and orange. How incredible is this cookie? I love the combination and can’t wait to try them!
Wonderful! Orange… what a unique flavor for these (not the usual coconut). I need to get that book out – you make these SMS recipes look so good! I’ve always mixed them by hand… and yes, the texture is somewhat goopey… or strange, plus “forming’ them is a challenge too (at least for me). But these turned out wonderful!
Looks great! I wish that I just made the effort to make them. I know that I was going to, but instead I made strawberry cupcakes!
Yours look great! So nicely and perfectly shaped! From the look of it, I wouldn’t guess you had had any problems getting them to stay together. And I’m with you – I detest chopping chocolate! I usually make my fiance do that part of the recipe. 🙂
These look so nice…I think they would be very nice on a cookie tray at Christmas so I will bookmark them for then. You make such perfect looking ones.
THey look so pretty. I did not think of these as a pretty cookie but yours are.
I think mine are the only ones that flattened but they were still good to eat.
I will have to try again and see if I can mine to look like yours.
I have such a hard time rolling sticky cookies into balls with my hands. I have really hot hands! If I ever try this I’ll make sure to turn the AC down to 50F in my house.
They look perfect Tracey – as with everything else you make.
Your macaroons looks wonderful! I’m sure you mom will love them. I am also not big on coconut, so I subbed out almonds in mine. But after seeing everyones cookies, I really want to taste one with coconut. Maybe I’ll give them a try since these are so simple and I happen to have coconut in the house left over from the coconut custard pie recipe. Great job!
Your macaroons look simply wonderful!
I used unsweetened coconut, so they were just the right amount of sweetness (probably could have used less sugar even so)…however, mine didn’t come out as moist as the ones I’ve been seeing online, and I’m wondering if the unsweetened coconut had something to do with that? Anyway..thanks for baking with me!
Those look wonderful. And just 5 ingredients. Have to try them.
beautiful pics.
They look very good! I hope your mom enjoys them!
I would have loved to bake along but I had two girls get their wisdom teeth pulled. I have been nursing them back to normal!No time to bake..yet!
Gorgeous cookies. I love the idea of doubling the zest…those must have tasted delicious.
Your cookies look beautiful! I loved mixing these with my hands. Must be a playing with food thing from my childhood. 🙂
I really like macaroons so I think that these look really yummy. I bet it’s nice to be home and back in your kitchen after a nice long visit to your in-laws’ house. Great job, Tracey!
Your macaroons look wonderful. You always seem to have great presentations for your treats. I agree with you on being able to bake in your own kitchen! It’s just so much more familiar when you get to use your own stuff.
it took a bit of mixing by hand before my egg whites were totally mixed in…even when i thought they were fully incorporated, i continued…and THEN i could that they were mixed in better. you probably just stopped mixing a little early. they look great though. hope your mom enjoyed them 🙂
Yours look delicious!! I actually missed that part about mixing with your hands, I did it all with my wooden spoon. And I used chocolate chips, didn’t chop up the chocolate at all. Yum!! These were good!!
Your cookies look beautiful. I like coconut, but didn’t love these cookies (mine weren’t nearly so nice, though). Two weeks is a long way to be out of your own kitchen, it must be fun to be back.
Looks beautiful! I agree with you about finely chopping the chocolate, so I went with chocolate chips. I do think I might try the finely chopped chocolate after seeing so many of the other bakers results.
I was a little worried the recipe wouldn’t work and hold everything together but I was pleasantly surprised! Your macaroons look great- must be all that finely chopped chocolate!!!
You’ve got mounds of coconut perfection! Love the pictures. Full disclosure- I used bittersweet chocolate too, though for my blog narrative, I stuck with saying semisweet. I thought I would like the less sweet chocolate, knowing how sweet the coconut is. I only wish I had some orange on hand. I know that would have given it the extra something something.
These are so wonderful…Superb:)
They look lovely! I think I scooped mine a little big . . . only got 12 out of the recipe, plus enough dough to make 3-4 later. But I thought the orange was really wonderful.
These are some seriously attractive macaroons. Almost too pretty to eat…almost…