Chocolate chip coconut cookies:
The holidays have always meant coconut to me, probably something to do with the coconut candy my grandfather always brought home from the local mom & pop grocery store. I've seen similarly shaped and colored candies in big box stores in my adulthood, but they lacked the soft suppleness of the ones from my younger days. Sadly, that grocery store is long out of business, though thankfully a local man runs a hardware shop in the building, which is by far better than it being torn down.
I'm nowhere near that town right now, but I still take comfort in knowing these small details.
So, these cookies are mostly coconut, but all around the edges and on the bottoms it becomes crunchy and it kind of dissolves in your mouth like fabulous sugary wonderfulness.
Ingredients:
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (unbleached preferably)
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
dash salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (optional, but awesome)
3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
2 tablespoons mini chocolate chips (or more if you like a lot of chocolate)
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Mix the coconut, flour, sugar, and salt together
Pour the melted coconut oil and extracts over and work until moistened throughout
Add the chocolate chips and mix.
Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until the cookies look crispy around the edges and toasted on top.
Remove cookies from oven, let cool on pan for several minutes, then remove carefully with spatula to a cooler spot. Cooling is very important with these cookies, they'll turn crispier as they cool and be much more awesome.
In our family of 3 adults and 1 child, my cookies were gone before the day was out.
Here's the list of everyone else who's participating, looks like an even 40, including me:
