Coconut, Turkish Delight & White Chocolate Macaroons

I’m guilty as charged for neglecting my blog since last week.

My day job has been driving me crazy busy and unfortunately, I need to sacrifice some of my personal time to meet some work deadlines. Besides the lack of blog posts, my appetite has suffered as a consequence of  work-related stress. Anyway, I’m in serious need of taking a breather, as the saying goes ” all work no play makes Emily a dull lady” right?

In effort to de-stress, I need to occupy my mind with something else besides work. Also, life can be a little lacklustre with an empty cookie jar laying on the table. So to kill two birds with one stone, baking seemed to be a wonderful idea. That said, I’m not in the mood of waiting for butter to soften or try to soften butter using microwave oven, macaroons fit my no-butter policy perfectly.

Not to be confused with french macarons – the “it-dessert” of the moment, macaroon is less “flamboyant” and low key than macaron.  Having said that, it doesn’t make macaroons any less welcoming to my cookie jar.

It’s worth noting that this is a nut- free macaroon recipe and in case you have allergy towards dark/milk chocolate but not white chocolate, this is the recipe for you.

(tweaked slightly from The Australian Women’s Weekly – Macaroons & Biscuits)

Makes 28

2 egg whites

1/2 cup (110g) caster sugar

1/4 cup (35g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cup (120g) desiccated coconut

45g turkish delight, use a kitchen scissor to snip into small pieces

90g white eating chocolate, chopped finely

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees celsius/ 300 degrees fahrenheit. Grease or layer oven trays with parchment papers.

2. Beat egg whites in small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, beating until dissolved after each addition.

3. Stir in sifted flour, coconut, chopped turkish delight (keep 28 pieces for decoration later) and chocolate, in two batches.

4. Using wet hands, roll rounded tablespoons of mixture into balls.

5. Place about 5 cm (2 inches) apart onto trays. Press a small piece of turkish delight on each macaroon.

6. Bake them for about 25 minutes; cool on trays.

Emily’s Note: This is my experiment to bake with turkish delight. Since they are quite sticky to handle especially when you try to snip them into smaller pieces, you can try dried cranberries (based on the original recipe from the book)  intead. Just add 45g of dried cranberries in replacement of turkish delight and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. Also, remember to set aside 28 whole cranberries for decoration.