German Chocolate Macaroons

This was a Facebook find, via Pinterest, that my husband insisted I make for Christmas. He's a hard core macaroon fan (not to be confused with macaron). These are sweet, chewy, nutty, and pretty much the perfect coconut macaroon. They aren't difficult to make, but they are very time-consuming. So time consuming that I was way too tired to haul out the real camera and take fussy photos. This is my iPhone. Sorry. :)

The source recipe is from Chef in Training.

Ingredients

5⅓ cups shredded sweetened coconut (two of the smaller size bags)
¾ cup sugar
6 Tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon salt
5 egg whites
1 cup finely chopped pecans (Calls for toasted, but they were fine untoasted)

Chocolate topping

Melt 4 ounces sweet chocolate (The Baker's kind)
1 tablespoon shortening

Sweetened condensed milk topping

6 ounces sweetened condensed milk (I just did the whole 14 oz can because I had no use for a partial can.)


Directions
Place sweetened condensed milk in a double boiler until slightly thickened (45min-1hr) stirring occasionally. Keep warm. It took closer to 1hr, 15 min for the condensed milk to thicken to my liking. It ends up taking on a dulce de leche flavor without the color or thickness. If you don't own a double boiler, do what I did and place a heat resistant bowl on top of a pan filled with gently simmering water.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line cookie sheet with parchment paper or grease and lightly flour the cookie sheet.

In a large mixing bowl combine coconut, sugar, flour and salt. Toss and mix well. Add egg whites and nuts and mix well. Using a round tablespoon,  drop macaroons onto prepared cookie sheet. Pack the spoon fairly tightly, or the macaroons will fall apart as they bake.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 18 to 22 minutes or until golden brown on top (check a few minutes before the earliest time. Mine were done at 18!) Place on cooling rack and let cool to room temperature.

Melt chocolate with shortening in microwave in 30 second increments, stirring every 30 seconds until chocolate is melted. Drizzle chocolate over macaroons. *Note: this left me with a very runny mixture, so I had to wait for a bit for it to cool down and thicken before drizzling.  Not sure if cutting the shortening back would help with the thickness or not.

Next, drizzle thickened sweetened condensed milk over the chocolate.  They do set up, but it takes awhile. Don't try to make these when you're in a hurry.