These summery macaroons are quick and easy to make and surely to be a crowd pleaser.

Dear baking world,

Before I can talk about the amazing cookies you’ve already seen a picture of, I want to talk about something new and exciting I’m doing with my blog. I am going to begin a monthly post series called: The Every Thirty Days Experiment. The entire purpose of my blog was to explore and experiment with science in the realm of baking. My favorite posts have been comparing a bunch of recipes in search of “the best” or “what happens if you do this instead of this?” I haven’t posted one of those recently, simply because they’re time consuming and require a lot of working space and energy. So now, once a month, I will post a baking experiment! Keep an eye out for these posts, they should be fun.

Anyways, back to the macaroons. These are really amazing little cookies. I’ve had this recipe on my mind for a long time. Every time I’ve baked the past few weeks, these spring to mind first and then something else distracts me and I end up baking something else. So this recipe has felt neglected, and for that, I’m sorry, delicious macaroons.

The one thing I loved about these macaroons is how easy, yet delicious, they are! My coworkers thought they were so fancy, but little did they know that it took my about forty minutes from start to finish to make them. The fancy thing came from the hint of lime, cranberries and chocolate dipped bottom.

All you need for these are a bag of flaked coconut, sweetened condensed milk and some things to jazz them up. The coconut doesn’t have to be sweetened because the are sweet enough to start with. As for the things to jazz these babies up, if you have them, I recommend trying the macaroons with cranberries. For my macaroons, I used frozen cranberries and then put them in the blender so they were extra finely chopped. You could easily use dried cranberries instead or you could also make them with finely chopped raspberries or blueberries, frozen or otherwise. Just make sure they’re very finely chopped. You don’t even need berries, but they do add something extra fancy to them.  You’ll throw all of that and some lime zest and vanilla into a bowl and mix. I rolled mine into one ounce balls, which is about a Tablespoon of macaroon. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the top is golden and brown.

The final step is the best step. Melt some chocolate chips in a glass bowl in the microwave. This is a bit tricky because if you overheat chocolate, it will seize. First, microwave the chocolate chips for thirty seconds. Take it out, even if they don’t look melty, and stir. They will continue melting while you stir. Put them in for another thirty seconds, remove and stir. Do it one more time if you want the chocolate a little more melty, but it usually only takes me about 45 seconds to melt chocolate chips.

Then, dip your macaroons into the melted chocolate. I just put them on a cookie sheet and let them set. When they were cooled, I put them into a container straight into the fridge because these things are the best when they’re chilled.

Hopefully you enjoy these macaroons as much as I/my coworkers did!

Happy baking,

Brita