Chocolate coconut macaroons. Not almond cookies. But very simple cookies loaded with coconut and almost fudgy at the center. A true treat. And we're making them in our kitchen for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK.

Hey there. We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've written and published three dozen cookbooks with more on the way. We've developed over 20,000 original recipes in the past twenty-five years. This is our podcast about food and cooking, our passion. We're happy you've joined us!

Here are the segments for this podcast episode:

[00:55] Our one-minute cooking tip: Always use kosher salt for brines and marinades.

[03:12] We head to the kitchen and make simple chocolate coconut macaroons. Here's the recipe:

Heat the oven to 350F/175 C fan or convection.

Line an 18 x 13 inch/46 x 33 cm baking sheet with parchment paper.

Beat 4 room-temperature large eggs, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, and a pinch of salt in a bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form.

Beat in 1 cup/200 grams granulated white or caster sugar in small increments until it's all been added and you can't feel grains of sugar between your (clean) fingers.

Remove the beaters and fold in one 14 ounce/400 gram package of sweetened, shredded coconut.

Then fold in 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons/75 grams unsweetened cocoa powder until well combined.

Drop by heaping, spiky tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before enjoying.

[14:57] What’s making us happy in food this week: jammy oat bars and dried pears.

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Skargaard, and together with Bruce, as you well know, we have

written three dozen cookbooks, are writing our 37th cookbook right now.

In fact, it's due in about a week, so don't even talk to me right now.

We'll talk a lot more about that ahead in the podcast when we get

ready and willing and able to actually speak about that book.

It's now just like a billion jigsaw pieces all around my head.

I can't even deal with it.

Oh, anyway, we're not dealing with that on this podcast.

Instead, we've got a one minute cooking tip.

We're going to head for the kitchen and make chocolate macaroons.

This is a recipe I brought to our marriage.

It's hard to believe it, but I brought this one to our marriage.

We're going to make this very simple chocolate macaroons and we'll tell you

what's making us happy in food this week.

Our one minute cooking tip.

What is it this week, Mark?

Well, okay, this is something that actually comes out of the cookbook

that we are currently writing, and that is, if you're making a brine of

any sort, well, or brining, uh, let's say you're gonna brine chicken even,

you should always use chicken stock.

Kosher salt, not table salt, because, and here's why, table salt has anti caking

agents in it, and these anti caking agents, particularly with pickles and

those kind of things, will over time fall out of suspension and cloud the brine.

It's not such a big deal when you're brining chicken breasts, but if

you're making pickles or relishes or anything like that at home,

you're Table salt can end up giving you murk, and you don't want murk.

Will sea salt work in this case?

Yes, it will.

Sea salt will work.

It's sometimes a bit harder to dissolve than kosher salt.

And, of course, you can always use pickling or canning salt, which is just

really, actually, to be honest with you, much more finely ground sea salt.

Table salt We got nothing against it.

I mean, I use it when I bake, I use it all the time, but I can just

tell you that it will cloud brines.

And one of the ways, you know, if let's say a brine has gone off is

that it gets exceptionally murky.

Yeah.

To the point where you can barely see the pickles in it.

Yeah.

And so if you're doing any of that, you really want to use

kosher salt because it's a more refined, it's not that it's somehow.

better for you nutritionally.

I know there's a million TikTok influencers who claim it is.

It's not true.

It just doesn't have the additives.

That's right.

It doesn't have the anti caking agents that can fall out of

suspension and cloud your brain.

Okay, before we get to the kitchen and head there to make my chocolate

macaroons, let me say that it would be great if you could If you subscribe to

this podcast, if you rate it, liked it, do all those things that you can do to

it, we are unsupported and unsponsored by choice because we want to be able to

say anything we want to be able to say, like how TableSalt has caking agents in

it or anti caking agents, which if we were sponsored by Morton's, we couldn't say.

So we want to be able to say anything that we can say.

Well, you just can't.

I think that one's been dead for a long time.

So, uh, it would be great if you could rate, like, uh, and even

write a review, if possible, on a platform for this podcast.

That would be great.

Okay, up next, we are headed to the kitchen.

True, we are recording this one week before Passover in 2024.

Or is it 5783?

I don't know what year that is.

I don't know.

And this is going up on the first night of Passover.

Wait, wait, I'm sorry.

Um, I don't know, but I'm the Christian.

Now, what's wrong with you that you don't know what year this is?

Okay, do go on.

And it's irrelevant that Passover is here, except that macaroons

are usually served at Passover because they're not made with flour.

But, these are delicious any time.

Are you talking about the kind of macaroons your grandmother

pulled out of that can?

Oh, oh, macaroons out of the can.

They were soft and mushy and gross.

There was no crunch to them.

I remember it.

I remember being at Passover with you and the macaroons out of the can.

This is long.

After my Christian roots, and, um, I remember picking up one of

them and squishing it like a disc.

Oh, and grease actually squeezes out of them.

You moisturizing.

Oh, yeah, or zits.

It's disgusting.

What you hear is our oven is on.

It is heated to 350 Fahrenheit, 175 centigrade, and now you hear

Mark putting a piece of parchment into a large, lipped baking sheet.

Yes, I'm going to put this parchment down because we need a little bit

of buffer between the metal of the sheet and the macaroons we're making.

And I should tell you that I'm making chocolate coconut macaroons.

These are not macaroons.

Almond flavored like the ones out of the can those got coconut macaroons

But instead these are chocolate macaroons and I want to tell you

how I got to trust be it back didn't get it I kind of made it up.

I grew up in Dallas and we always went to Kubey's for delicatessen and Kubey's

sold these kind of Chocolate coconut macaroons and as a kid it was the big

treat after my hot pastrami sandwich To go and it's always hot in here Pastrami.

I don't, I don't know why we had to add the hot to the hat.

Because you could have a cold pastrami sandwich.

I suppose, but anyway.

People do it.

I guess.

And they put ketchup on it.

Oh, gosh, wow, we really are in Dallas now.

Okay, anyway, um, my mother did not.

My mother put prepared horseradish and mustard on her hot pastrami sandwich.

On rye, of course.

Anyway, after After lunch, it was always lunch, I would go run for

the chocolate macaroons in the counter and so over the years I

tried to figure out how to do this.

So as Bruce says, this is the way.

I've lined a baking sheet with parchment paper, and we've got the

oven heated up and now What's next?

We have four large egg whites, and they are in the mixing bowl of our stand

mixer, and they are at room temperature.

Yes, I can tell you that I put these in the mixing bowl about two hours ago,

and the reason why this is is because egg whites are so full of protein that

the protein crimps up when it's cold.

It doesn't elongate, and so when it gets to room temperature, those

protein strands get longer and And they actually can trap air better.

Just think about people on beach chairs.

They get looser and oilier as they sit out on the beach.

So, you want your egg white proteins to be very Now I'm

imagining sand in my macaroons.

Just imagine suntone oil, that's what we should flavor these with.

Oh, banana.

Pineapple.

Banana boat.

Oh, nice!

Florida macaroons.

Anyway.

So I'm turning the mixer on, and we're adding a pinch of salt, and we're adding

half a teaspoon cream of tartar, which is acidic, and it helps the flavor.

Stabilize the macaroons, so when we fold the other ingredients

in, it doesn't deflate so much.

Yeah, there's a little, let's just be really weirdly historical here.

Creative Tartar is a leftover product of wine production,

but that's not where I'm going.

Actually, what happens here is Creative Tartar is added because

we have stopped cooking in copper.

Cookware and the old French chefs who would beat egg whites with salt in

copper balls didn't need this acidic help to stabilize the egg white.

So since we've moved away from cooking in or beating or baking in copper

balls, We have to then kind of adjust the formula a bit and that's the

half teaspoon of cream of tartar.

Okay, so these things are going around and around and around and

we're going to get them to soft peaks.

What are soft peaks, Chef?

So basically if I turn off the mixer and we do that, and I lift up the

beater, You see that the top of the meringue doesn't even form a peak yet.

It's not big enough.

When it's at soft peak, it means I lift up this beater

and the egg whites stick to it.

And the tip of the peak just bends over a little bit and we're not there yet.

So I'm going to put this back on and it's not going to take long.

And you know, the test, actually the perfect test for this is, you

take the beaters out of the mixer.

And you turn the bowl upside down over your spouse's head.

Oh, no.

And if the meringue doesn't fall out, it's right.

Okay, no, really, the real test here is the peaks either need

to look like your mother's hair after she takes the curlers out.

Oh, excellent.

That soft peak.

Or your mother's hair after she sticks her finger in an electric

socket and it's sticking all out.

That's too far.

In various ways.

Okay.

Well, I, uh, hey.

Cartoons have not lied to me.

I know they haven't.

Okay.

Okay, so I'm gonna look at this again.

These are actually looking much better now.

Yeah, we're about there.

Okay.

They take on a little bit of a glossy, not terribly glossy, but

a little bit of a glossy sheen.

And they're very mound up.

And now we're gonna start putting the sugar in.

We have 200 grams or one cup of sugar.

We're gonna put it in one tablespoon or 12 grams at a time.

You do not have to use fancy sugar with this.

If you're using caster sugar, just make sure you're at our weight.

Okay.

of 200 grams, not any volume, and about a tablespoon at a time.

And the reason we want to do this is to make sure that the sugar dissolves,

but also so that it gets evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

And this is going to take some time.

How do you know when it's done?

Okay, so we're going to actually cut away here in a second, but what we're going

to do is keep doing this, and when we're right, and if you put your clean fingers

in the mixture, it shouldn't feel sandy.

No grains at all.

Right.

Just smooth.

Right.

Exactly.

It should feel pretty smooth.

Uh, some people are going to say, can we use superfine sugar?

Don't waste your money.

Honestly.

But you can if you have it in the house.

And again, go by weight, not by volume.

But, uh, again, superfine sugar is just really expensive.

You can do this with regular, uh, granulated white sugar.

You just have to take your time at one tablespoon at a time.

Okay, we're back and it's ready.

So i'm going to turn the mixer off and now what are we going to do?

So now we're going to take the beaters out, and so we have room to do

this, and I am dumping in a 14 ounce package of sweetened shredded coconut.

That's 400 grams for those of you who are following in another country.

And why am I using sweetened when there's already sugar in there?

Because this particular macaroon is going to get cocoa, which has no sugar in it, so

we need to balance that with extra sweet.

And it's going to give us a chewy inside while we have a crispy outside.

So I'm folding this coconut in and I don't want to overdo it because I don't

want to deflate all these egg whites.

Right, so the cocoa is going in and what it is in U.

S.

volumes is three quarters of a cup of cocoa powder, unsweetened cocoa powder.

Plus, Two additional tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder.

Don't you dare use hot chocolate mix.

Unsweetened cocoa powder.

It doesn't matter whether it's dutched or natural.

We don't care.

If you're going by weight, this is 75 grams of dried cocoa powder.

And again, we're doing it just until this cocoa is fully incorporated.

I don't want to see any more white, but I don't want to overdo it.

And now we have to form the macaroons.

And there are two schools of this.

And Mark's gonna do one school, which is taking a tablespoon and dolloping on it.

It's a, it's a very hefty, overfilled tablespoon of it.

And I'm using the other school, which is I'm taking a two tablespoon

cookie dough scoop, and I'm making perfectly rounded half mounds.

Yeah, I actually don't like the rounded ones.

I will confess to you, I don't.

And it has to do with koobies in Dallas.

Because the macarons I got when I was a kid were all spiky with coconut.

You know, all around it sticking out.

And so I, it just reminds me of my childhood.

So I like it spiky and mine end up very spiky and I like that.

So what you're going to do is fill up your tray with these.

Do they need maybe an inch, three centimeters, maybe between them?

Not much.

Cause they don't really spread.

Right.

Exactly.

And then you're going to bake these up.

About 20 minutes until they're firm to the touch, but not crunchy to the touch.

Yeah, firm to the touch is what you're looking.

They will continue to set up on a cooling rack.

So we're going to come back and take them out of the oven.

Oven.

The house smells like chocolate.

It's just like, it smells like coconut and chocolate.

And these have cooled so we can pick them right off of the parchment.

We let them cool right there on the parchment and we just

pick them off and eat them.

And you realize this has six ingredient recipe, right?

Egg whites, salt, cream of tartar, sugar.

The sweetened coconut and then the cocoa powder.

It's six ingredients for this.

This, you know Dairy free.

No problems with dairy here.

Kubey's, if this is just like Kubey's, it would be almost

worth growing up in Dallas.

Almost.

Watch it.

Watch what you say.

I mean, we, of course, had Ratners, but, you know.

Oh, well, we had Ratners.

And Moishies.

We had Moishe's I bet Kubey's didn't have the mice running up the

front windows like Moishe's did.

No, it didn't.

And, uh, you know, okay, so, we didn't have such places, but, uh,

we, you didn't have good Tex Mex.

No, I didn't even know what that was until I went to college.

No, you didn't.

You didn't even know what pulled pork was until you met me.

So, give me a break.

No, in my family, I wouldn't have known.

I might, we ate a lot of bacon.

What?

Jewish families don't eat pulled pork?

We ate bacon like crazy, but that was the extent of the pork.

Oh, wow.

Um, well, there you go.

I don't know what pork has to do with chocolate macaroons,

but somehow we got there.

I mean, I've already bitten into one, and these are so good.

They're chewy on the inside.

They're crunchy on the outside.

They're so chocolatey.

They are, uh, they're very, um, They're chewy on the inside, like you say, but

they have this crunchy exterior to them.

I want to tell you that, although these are warm from the oven still a bit,

they actually get better overnight.

Uh, if you seal them in a container at room temperature overnight,

they actually get a little better because they get denser even on do

get denser, which is really good.

And shockingly, they're not as hard.

They're not overly sweet, despite the sweet meringue and the sweetened

coconut, they're not overly sweet.

Before we get to the last segment of this podcast, let me say

that we do have a newsletter.

It comes out, I don't know, about every two weeks.

And this recipe will appear probably in that newsletter.

You can sign up online.

on our website.

We don't collect your email.

We don't sell it.

We don't even allow the provider mail chip to collect your email.

Instead, it's all blocked from us and from them.

So you can sign up and you can unsubscribe at any time you like.

You can find that on our website, cooking with Bruce and mark.

com.

Okay.

Next is the final segment of this episode.

What's making us happy in food this week?

Well, I guess I'm going to go back to one we've already done in terms of

cooking and that is those jammy oat bars.

I am in the middle of teaching Faulkner.

I know this is insane to talk about Faulkner.

podcast, but I am in a six week seminar on Faulkner that I'm teaching three novels,

and I brought those jam opars that we made a couple weeks ago on the podcast

and appear on Tick Tock in a video and on Instagram under my name in a video.

I brought them again.

And let me just say that people just go crazy over them.

I Bye, guys.

There were maybe 35 people in the room and maybe about a hundred people online,

but they have about 35 people on the room, uh, for this seminar on Faulkner.

And I brought, I don't know how many pieces you cut them

into and they were gone.

There was a single one left when I picked up my cutting board and walked out.

If you missed that episode, it is episode 30 of this podcast, where we make.

Those jammy O bars and you can listen to us, make them or go to our tick tock

channel and watch me make them there.

Um, but they are, they are delicious.

What's making me happy in food this week is something weird.

It's dried pears.

And I hated dried pears as a kid, but one of the recipes, prunes is making me happy.

This well, maybe they are.

They made my grandmother happy.

Oh, It was always prune juice.

Prunes always make you happy in the morning.

Anyway, do go on.

If they keep making you happy, you're not happy in the afternoon.

If that makes any sense.

But we have a recipe in the new book we're working on for dried

pears that are fennel syrup.

I do.

And I love them so much, and I ordered a giant pear.

bag of dried pears to make this recipe and I have extras, so

I am liking my dried pears.

Yeah, we always have a stocked pantry of dried fruit because I love dried apples.

I love apples, but I love dried apples.

Whenever we go anywhere there are apple rings in a store, you go crazy.

You buy them like it's all of a sudden going to be, you know, the apocalypse

and you need the dried apples.

Actually, uh, you're the one who got me there because it is hard to find them.

That, for example, at our local New England rural supermarket,

you cannot find dried apples.

So when I do go to a city, when the country boy goes to the city

and I see them, I want them just like, I don't know, prostitutes.

I don't know.

Trust me.

There are prostitutes here in the country.

I don't know.

Of all sorts of varieties.

I'm trying to think of what country boys want in the city.

Um, they want to ride the train.

And they want to go to a Broadway musical.

At that ticker tape parade.

Anyway, um, sorry.

Uh, let's go back to this.

Uh, so we have a lot of dry fruit.

Uh, Bruce does have a lot of dried, uh, pineapple, and also dried

pears, um, they're great snacks.

I, I like a little bit of sweet with a cup of tea in the middle of

the afternoon, and a dried pear or dried apple is a really great thing

to have along with my cup of tea.

Okay, that's our weird podcast for this week.

Good gosh.

Uh, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for being a part of this journey.

And we appreciate your spending your podcast time with us.

And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

So please tell us what's making you happy in food this week at our Facebook

group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

We want to know what's happening in your life with food, and we will

continue to share what's making us happy in food here at Cooking with Bruce

and Mark.