Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chip cookies. Crispy, chewy, chocolaty and coconutty! Four of my favorite elements of the perfect cookie.
100 degrees still in September and I baked cookies. Because these delicious toasted coconut chocolate chip cookies made having my oven on while it's still sweltering outside so worth it.
Have you ever watched the show "Hoarders"? I have, once, and the mere thought of "what if they moved and had to pack up all that stuff" had me practically break out into a cold sweat because I hate packing, and moving, and apparently I hate unpacking too.
The one time watching that show made me realize how many boxes I still have in every room of my house that we haven't unpacked yet and we have been in our house, ummm, two years now. I think it was a scene from "The Incredibles" where the Elastigirl said something about how they weren't allowed to move until the very last box was unpacked and when she told her husband, Mr Incredible, "Honey I finally unpacked the last box" and he told her they had to move again.
Maybe that is why I am dragging my heels with unpacking. Because I hate moving. Except I can't seem to find a lot of stuff so recently I set a goal of unpacking a few boxes every weekend.
We aren't moving anytime soon, but with working on so many house remodel/redecorating projects we haven't done much unpacking and wont until it is all finished. Especially since storage in our house is slim and we want to create more storage as we remodel.
So until then, boxes it is. Lots of boxes. I opened one box one weekend and realized that ohmygoshIamahorder because it was FULL of old food magazines, news paper clippings. Recipes I had torn out of magazines etc. that I had planned on one day organizing into binders. Yeah like that was going to happen.
This was pre-blogs, pre-pinterest stuff I had saved. I used to actually love getting food mags like Cooking Light, Food and Wine, Fine Cooking, Cooks Illustrated, Saveur, Food Network and I kept them all thinking one day I would make all the recipes.
I think I will have to live to 943 to make all the recipes. So I decided to sit down and go through them and throw out what I knew I wasn't ever going to make.
And realized that there were several of these magazine and recipe filled boxes. Hoarder status.
About a month ago I was almost all the way through one box when I came across this cookie recipe in Cooking Light magazine from 2010 and I remembered I wanted to make it back then.
Better late than never. One thing I have always noticed about recipes in Cooking light, especially baked items, is that their idea of making the recipe "lighter" is a batch that doesn't make many cookies ( you know so if you eat them all in two days it's not THAT many calories) or they have things like "2 ounces of chocolate chips" for a batch of a dozen and a half cookies.
What is that? Like 2 chocolate chips a cookie? Not enough!
I love making some recipes lighter, not everything needs to be insanely calorie laden, but for me, cookies are a treat and I am ok with loading them up with more than 2 chocolate chips per cookie. I usually put in 2 cups of chocolate chips into a recipe.
One of the things I adapted in this recipe, after doubling of course because if you are going to bake cookies and the batch only makes 12-16 you know that won't last a day , was the coconut.
Original recipe called for all sweetened flaked. I am not the hugest fan of sweetened flaked, it tends to be too sweet and almost gummy in texture.
I found a sweetened flaked coconut that I like from Trader Joes and it is only lightly sweetened so I used half that and half unsweetened ( also from Trader Joe's) and lightly toasted them mixed together.
Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup flaked coconut, unsweetened
- 1 cup flaked coconut, sweetened ( look for lightly sweetened if you can)
- 2 cups 9 ounces all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- 1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- ½ c granulated sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon coconut extract
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 stick, 8 tablespoon unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon coconut milk
- 1 ½-2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Lightly toast the coconut in a saucepan over medium low heat, stirring often. One toasted let cool completely
- Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl, whisking to mix well and set aside.
- In a stand mixer or large bowl mix together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each then mix in the extracts. Add in the flour mixture and coconut milk and mix until just combined, no streaks of flour seen. Fold in the toasted coconut and chocolate chips. Chill for one hour up to overnight - optional but not necessary.
- When ready to bake preheat oven to 350 Deg F. Place rounded tablespoonfuls of dough two inches apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicon bake mat. Bake for 8-10 min or until edges start to turn light brown and middles are still a little soft. Cool for one minute on baking sheet then transfer immediately to wire cooling rack.
- Keep in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days or freeze up to 3 months. Thats if they last that long without getting eaten!!
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