We found fresh garden carrots in our CSA farm share box this week. And I found a recipe for “out-of-the-box” not-your-regular cookies—these yummy soft and gently spiced carrot macaroons. What a way to eat your vegetables!
These cookies are delicious and different, but not that easy to make. Yeah—you read that right. You cook the batter in a double boiler before you even bake them. But don’t let that stop you—I think they are worth the effort. Crunchy ground almonds, unsweetened coconut, pumpkin pie spices and a pinch of cayenne, plus grated carrots–you can only win with those ingredients!
The morning after—that is after the first time I made these, Robbie woke me up with, “Good news and bad news. Your cookies are really good but they’re sticking to the parchment paper.” He couldn’t get them off.
Maybe they stuck because after mixing the batter I took a shower and brushed my teeth? Or because right after I pulled the cookies from the oven and went to bed? Yup—I just left the baking sheets full of cookies to cool on the counter overnight.
These carrot macaroons are slightly adapted from a recipe in Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-your-Mouth Cookies—an award-winning gem of a cookbook. Medrich instructs us to remove the cookies from the parchment by holding one cookie at a time and gently peeling the parchment away from it. But when Robbie pulled a cookie off the parchment, bits of the paper stuck to the bottom of the cookie.
Clever Robbie figured out the solution. He simply flipped the sheet of parchment with cookies stuck on it over, and then rubbed the paper with a wet kitchen sponge. The macaroons pulled right off—no sticking. Note to self: Bake carrot macaroons on a silicone baking mat next time!
What’s your favorite way to eat carrots? Tequila carrots anyone?
If you make these cookies—snap a photo and post it on Instagram or Facebook—hash-tagged with #lettycooksveggies.
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Carrot Macaroons
Ingredients
- ¾ cup whole almonds
- 2 large egg whites
- 1 cup organic cane sugar
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- Pinch cayenne pepper
- ¼ teaspoon Real Salt
- 1 ⅓ cups finely shredded carrots
- ¾ cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
- Heaping ¼ teaspoon grated orange zest
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- In a food processor, pulse the almonds until you get chopped almonds ranging from finely chopped to mostly finely chopped.
- In a stainless steel bowl, whisk the egg whites with a fork until frothy. Stir in the sugar, pumpkin pie spice, salt and cayenne. Add the carrot, coconut, almonds and orange zest and stir until everything is moistened. Set aside for 10 minutes to dissolve the sugar and hydrate the coconut.
- Set the bowl directly in a wide skillet of barely simmering water and stir the mixture with a silicone spatula, scraping the bottom to prevent burning, until the mixture is very hot to the touch and any liquid at the bottom of the bowl has thickened and turned from translucent to opaque.
- Drop by heaping teaspoons 1 inch apart on parchment lined baking sheets or on silicone baking mats. Bake about 25 minutes, until the tips of the carrot shreds begin to color. Allow to cool completely.
- Remove the cookies from the pan as best you can—use Robbie’s trick if you lined your pans with parchment.
- Keep in a box loosely covered—they will loose their crunch if kept airtight.
Those are a terrific idea Letty. · 30 September, 2012
And they are very tasty! Would be a great idea to end a curry meal. Alice Medrich uses garam masala in her recipe. · 1 October, 2012
Sounds wonderful! · 7 October, 2012