Chocolate-Covered Vegan Macaroons

Macaroons were originally described as a “small, sweet cake consisting largely of ground almonds.” This definition just doesn’t get it quite right. They forgot the word “delicious.”

The etymology of the name weaves its way back to the Italian word “maccarone which itself comes from ammaccare meaning to “crush.” I’m glad the Italians didn’t have a food processor back then because who knows what word they would have used instead. Macaroon is such a lovely name. I think pulsaroon or processessoroon wouldn’t have had the same effect.

Macaroons have been a favorite treat of mine beginning back in the days when my mom would buy the store-brand flat coconut cookies. As an adult my tastes buds evolved and I upgraded to Dean and Deluca’s chocolate-covered macaroons. I will confess that even after choosing a vegan lifestyle, in the early days I would still imbibe in macaroons from Dean and Deluca’s when they were brought into the office. I’ve read that you have just as much willpower as you think you have and during those days I wasn’t always as confident as I could have been.

Can you really blame me? Macaroons are coconutty goodness with a crispy outer shell and soft, gooey insides. What’s not to love?

I haven’t felt deprived about giving up most things for a vegan lifestyle, but this was on my list of things that I definitely struggled to leave behind. Until one day when a friend gave me the book “Raw Food: 100 Recipes to get the glow” by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis. I have to confess that my first thought was “Isn’t being vegan enough? Why do I even need to be thinking about raw food too?” But over time I’ve really come to enjoy reading this book and trying some of its recipes…including one super delicious recipe in particular, macaroons.

I was in heaven the first time I tried the recipe. Of course I eventually came to alter it a bit, reducing the sweetness a tad to meet my tastes. Matthew offers a chocolate macaroon with a plain macaroon alternative. I found I preferred the plain version and then one day discovered a tasty alternative. I decided to dip it in chocolate. Visions of my long lost Dean and Deluca macaroon danced in my head. It was a lovely marriage of flavors and remains one of my favorite treats.

The recipe recommends “baking” the cookies in a dehydrator. I don’t have one of those (yet) and the lowest settings on my oven and toaster oven are higher than the recommended 110 degrees or so that Raw foodists advocate. So I don’t bake mine at all. I sometimes freeze them, but usually just put them in the fridge for an hour or so and they hold up quite well.

If I crave that crispy outer shell I sometimes will turn the oven on to about 200, let it heat up, turn the oven off, and then place the macaroons on a cookie sheet and let them sit in the cooling oven for an hour or so. After they cool off, they have just a bit of that crispy goodness.

In honor of National Beast Cancer Awareness Month I decided to make a pink macaroon, but I didn’t want to use red food coloring. I’ve read bad things about artificial food coloring and have been mulling ideas for healthy alternatives. How did I make a pink macaroon? Beet juice. Sounds crazy I know. That’s why I did it with only one. But guess what? It didn’t change the flavor at all. I will use this on the whole batch next time.

And another couple items of note. Matthew Kenney recommends using dried, unsweetened coconut flakes and raw almonds. I recommend these too, but at the same time I realize these are not always readily available (or affordable). If you want to make due with regular coconut, I usually pulse it in the food processor a few seconds so that the flakes are smaller. And I buy my almonds from Costco. I’m not certain what “raw” means when it comes to nuts because from what I’ve read it appears that all nuts in the US are required to go through some pasteurization process. What I guess we’re trying to avoid is roasted nuts. I know I personally love the flavor and texture of nuts like almonds, cashews and Brazil nuts that are not roasted.

I hope you enjoy these chocolate-covered vegan macaroons. You don’t have to be into raw food or even be vegan to enjoy them, but it never hurts!