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. 
Coconut, Turkish Delight & White Chocolate Macaroons
(tweaked slightly from The Australian Women’s Weekly – Macaroons & Biscuits)
Makes 28
Ingredients:
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
Method:
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.
These are beautiful Emily! I’m sorry to hear about your work-stress. I know how you feel. Hope these beautiful delicious looking cookies make your stress go away! I might try with dry cranberries. Can I use shredded coconuts instead? Have a bunch of them left. Love the photos and hopefully next week is less stress for you, Em!
May I just say, eating sweet desserts can really make one happy (in my case, great for de-stressing)!
And yes, you can use shredded coconuts.
Wow, this macaroons look so yummie….coconut and white chocolate…great combination. Great pictures as well
Hi Juliana,
Thanks for your compliment. I agree, they make quite a combo.
Your Macaroons look delicious. You know I always thought macaroons were the coconut cookies, not the “it-dessert” ones. One day I looked up the spelling and the “it-dessert” is spelled Macaron. But I think I like the low key Macaroons better
Hope the cookies helped de-stress you.
Hi Nancy,
Well, I like eating both macaroons and macarons. But when it comes to baking, I think baking macaroons is far easier than the latter mainly I don’t like to pipe batter when I’m short of time.
Anyway, the cookies certainly help in destressing.
Thanks for your comment.
What a creative idea! these are gorgeous!
These are wonderful…dessert always helps me feel more relaxed
These are beautiful! I’ve never tried my hand at making Turkish Delight but now I want to…gorgeous!
Love macaroons – somehow mine always burn a bit! We missed you!
Hello Emily – great to see your fab posts! These look delicious. Your photo montage of the ingredients is equally delicious -
Hi, these look ‘smore’ish. You could try dipping your scissors into some corn starch to prevent the turkish delight from sticking too much. Definitely gonna give this a try, have some delight in the pantry at the moment (cherry) that is too sweet on it’s own. It will be perfect. Thanks for the recipe!
Carey
South Africa
oh wow, turkish delight. I really want some of them! Beautiful and delicious!