A Beautiful Thing: coconut macaroons

I'm participating in another linky from An Accomplished Woman. She asks:  What do you do to make life more beautiful for your family?  I think special food made with love makes our life more beautiful.  In fact, my hubby told me just a couple days ago he's glad I put forth the effort to make good food.


This is one of my all time favs.  Not everyone likes coconut, but those who have had these cookies at my house are always happy about it!  And they are very easy.  ok, I should go cook something good.  Here's the recipe:

These are about the easiest cookies you can make, well besides the refrigerated packages from the grocery store, but let's not talk about those. Here's the recipe:

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 large egg white
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt

mix those ingredients together and then stir in 3 1/2 cups of sweetened flaked coconut. drop the dough by scant tablespoonfuls onto the sheets. Parchment is highly recommended for this recipe. trust me. Bake at 325 for 20-25 minutes and let cool to set up before removing from pan. The last couple of times I have made these I have made them flat instead of the traditional mounded type, then drizzle melted chocolate on top. These are so great! all crunchy and sugary around the outer edge.  This recipe is from Joy of Cooking, a book everyone should own!

EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO CHECK MY PANTRY FOR THE INGREDIENTS FOR THESE.........

food

Yeah, thought that word would get your attention. I'm making a link list of recipe sites that I go to regularly over to the right here. Hope you like it.

They taste like truffles, unbelievable!

Well, if you want to razzle dazzle some guests or make an edible gift, about 60 of these will run you about 5 or 6 bucks. This morning I'm getting ready for some company and a party/meal ~ yes, again! I thought I would try these with lemon cake. They actually taste like truffles, just a little spongy-er. I wanted raspberry, but it was not available. Maybe next time. I think it would be really good. What an unexpected treat from a box cake mix and commercial frosting. Those two cost me less than $4 and I had the chocolate for the coating. Well, I need to go finish the other half of them, just having a coffee break. And I need to vacuum, make this, chop that, wash the dishes, take a shower.....whoa...bye for now. They're coming at noon. Found this recipe one day while I was out clicking and linking and looking at: http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/desserts/cake-balls/ This picture is from the site, mine did not quite look that good, but I suspect they picked the best three out of sixty for the photo shoot. Don't you?

another use of fresh cream

Ok, I was desperate, It was looking like I was going to be throwing cream away again, very bad. Half a quart per gallon of milk is too much to waste. So after making 7-8 cups of alfredo sauce with last week's cream I determined not to get behind. I mean, I like coffee with cream a lot, but if I drank that much we'd have to call an ambulance. The new recipe I found was lemon posset (po'sit), pronounced with short vowels. I found that out from the Free Online Dictionary ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ ). Although, what I made last night and what the dictionary had for posset were pretty different, that's what happens when Americans get hold of something like this! It used 3 whole cups of cream for 5 servings, so of course, I 1 1/2 ed it. I think I could enjoy this now and then, it would be especially good with some raspberry sauce on top to cut the sour. It might make a good frozen dessert, we may try that with it. It would be sort of a cross between ice-cream and sherbet. mmm. I'll let ya know how it turns out.

click here for recipe

Oh, and posset was mentioned in a couple of Shakespeare's plays, I feel special now. uh huh. Apparently back then it was slightly sweeteded milk curdled with wine. Quite a bit different from the custard-y dessert I made last night.

* a little note*

the macaroon recipe down below has been corrected. It takes only egg white. very important.

Oh, clafouti! (cla-foo-TEE)

cranberry walnut clafouti

Well actually, clafouti is something you eat. It's pretty good too. It's a baked custard like thing with fresh fruit in it and served with 'crem-fresh' on top. It has a French spelling, but for the sake of us dumb Americans, I'll just put it that way. And that is really just and even mix of sour cream and heavy cream. I added a little sugar too. Anyway, in my quest to find recipes that use a lot of cream, I happened upon it on the great www. (Great?) We get fresh farm milk each week and I can end up with 2 1/2 to 3 quarts sometimes! Homemade butter just sits in the fridge unless someone is really in the mood for it and noodles with white sauce once a week just doesn't go over very well here! So, I thought I would tell you about clafouti in case you have never been introduced to it before. We do like to try new things around here. So here is a link to a recipe. CLAFOUTI Ours was blueberry. I didn't want to take a picture of it half eaten and all condensated on after a night in the fridge. So the picture is from the net too. There are lots of variations. yum. I think we'll try the cranberry walnut next, it sounds good and I have all the ingredients already. Bryan doesn't always like my fancy food tryouts. Don't get me wrong, he almost always has no problem eating them but he said, "Clafouti? Couldn't we just call it Steve?"