These are slightly soft cookies topped with a chewy coconut meringue. Place a generous dollop of the meringue on top of the cookie dough; it shrinks slightly in the oven. Reprinted with permission from Cookies are Magic by Maida Heatter, copyright © 2020. Published by Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown Books.
Ingredients
- 2½ cups sifted cake flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 8 ounces semisweet chocolate
- 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons instant coffee
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ¼ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
- 2 large egg yolks (reserve the whites for the meringue topping)
- 1/3 cup milk
- 2 large egg whites
- Pinch of salt
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- Scant ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour
- 7 ounces (2 packed cups) finely shredded coconut
Instructions
Adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line cookie sheets with baking parchment.
For the chocolate dough:
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Place 4 ounces (reserve remaining 4 ounces) of the chocolate in the top of a small double boiler over hot water on moderate heat. Stir occasionally until melted and smooth, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
To cut the remaining 4 ounces of chocolate, use a heavy knife, work on a cutting board, and cut the chocolate into pieces measuring ¼ to ½ inch across. Set aside.
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter. Add the vanilla and instant coffee and then both sugars and beat well. Beat in the egg yolks, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula. Beat in the melted chocolate. On low speed, gradually add half of the sifted dry ingredients, continuing to scrape the bowl with the spatula. Now gradually add the milk and then the remaining dry ingredients and beat only until smooth. Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the cut chocolate pieces. Set the chocolate dough aside at room temperature and prepare the topping.
For the meringue topping: In the small bowl of an electric mixer with clean beaters, beat the egg whites together with the salt until the whites hold soft peaks. Gradually add the sugar, 1 to 2 spoonfuls at a time, and then beat at high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until the meringue is very stiff. Toward the end of the beating, beat in the almond extract.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the flour and then the coconut.
To form the cookies:
Use a rounded spoonful of the chocolate dough for each cookie and place them 2 inches apart on the lined cookie sheets. Then top each cookie with a slightly rounded spoonful of the meringue topping. In order to wind up even, use a tiny bit less of the meringue topping than the chocolate dough for each cookie. Try to place the topping carefully so that it won’t all run off the chocolate cookie while it is baking. A little of it will probably run down the side of the cookie, no matter what, but that’s OK; it looks nice anyhow.
Bake for 12 to 13 minutes, until the topping is lightly browned. Reverse the cookie sheets top to bottom and front to back once during baking to ensure even browning. With a wide metal spatula, transfer the cookies to racks to cool.
