My brother and sister-in-law hosted a holiday party for many years—before everyone moved to different cities and people started getting busier lives and jobs—and for the time they existed, they were a highlight of the season. Their cozy house overflowed with friends they’d acquired through their various walks of life, and I knew almost none of them. I could banter with them and drunkenly get them to open up about their relationships and career dreams, but then leave the party with little fanfare and no half-hearted commitments to get coffee or see each other. There was a comfortable understanding that we’d see each other next year at the holiday party and do it all over again.
There was one guy in particular that I always loved to see because his presence meant the coquito had arrived. Or at least, my drunken memory is that he brought coquito. It could have been a much more delicious eggnog. It could have been someone other than this man who brought the coquito, but my hazy memory marries the two. In any case, I wanted to make a cookie based on my memory of this drink that made my memory so hazy, and so here are the coquito macaroons.
COQUITO MACAROONS
Makes 16 cookies
14 oz sweetened coconut flakes
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
¾ teaspoon flaky sea salt
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¾ cup sweetened condensed milk
½ cup cream of coconut
1 egg yolk
3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon rum
Granulated sugar and cinnamon, for garnish
In a large mixing bowl, combine the coconut, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg. Add the sweetened condensed milk, cream of coconut, and egg yolk and stir until just combined.
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whip the egg whites—you can do this by hand or with a mixer—until they reach a soft peak. They should turn white and foamy, but there’s no need to get them super stiff. When you pull the whisk out of the bowl, the tip of the whites should still fall back on itself.
Folk these whites, the vanilla, and the rum into the coconut mixture until no streaks of whites remain and everything is combined. The whites should have lightened the mixture up. Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line two sheet trays with parchment paper.
In a small bowl, combine roughly 1 tablespoon granulated sugar and ½ teaspoon cinnamon.
Use a 2 oz scoop to make these cookies—the texture is better when they’re bigger, so you can make them smaller, but I don’t recommend it. Top each cookie with a generous dusting of cinnamon sugar.
Bake them for 10-15 minutes or until the edges get caramelized and the center still has a little sign of goo left to them. Cool for five-ish minutes on the trays before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
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