It started with macaroons, our coconut macaroon mix. I love them. They are our easiest mix to make. Just add water. This mix makes great thumbprint cookies. I have a whisk with a nice round end on the handle—that’s my “thumb.” I use the whisk handle to make the indentations and then fill them with pastry fillings—lemon, cherry, and raspberry are my favorites. Sometimes I just press two chocolate wafers into the center. A caramel placed in the center will add a pool of melted caramel. It’s all good. (By the way, the pink macaroons to the right were made with the vanilla mix, a few drops of pink food coloring added, a teaspoon of flavor, and strawberry, raspberry, or cherry filling—I don’t remember which).
Chocolate Caramel Dipped Macaroons
Merri Ann, my wife went to women’s conference. An instructor had made coconut macaroons with our mix. She was she was coating them with a caramel, adding almonds and dipping them in chocolate and to make Almond Joy® cookies. Hers were fantastic. So we headed to the test kitchen to see what we could do. This is how we made ours; different but very good.
What You’ll Need
- Coconut Macaroon Mix (or equivalent recipe)
- Pastry fillings (if you want to use these instead of caramels)
- Chocolate Wafers
TIP: Wafers are made for candy makers. They’re better than chocolate chips. Use them if you can get them.
- We baked the macaroons according to directions.
- Next, we placed caramels or pastry fillings in the center of each cookie before baking.
- Then we melted chocolate wafers in the microwave.
- Once the cookies cooled, we dipped the bottoms of each cookie and part way up the sides in the melted chocolate.
- Finally, we placed the cookies on waxed paper to let the chocolate set.
Chocolate Fudge Filled Shortbread Cookies
We made shortbread cookies from our shortbread cookie mix. We used our fudge frosting to fill them and make sandwich cookies. We dipped the cookies in melted chocolate to cover one half of the cookies. We drizzled a little melted white chocolate over the cookies for an attractive finish. Again, these were scrumptious cookies.
What You’ll Need
- Shortbread Cookie Mix (or equivalent recipe)
- Chocolate Fudge Frosting
- Chocolate Wafers
- White Chocolate Wafers
Frosted Lemon Cream Sandwich Cookies
If you can make sandwich cookies with shortbread cookies, certainly you can sandwich cookies with sugar cookies. We have sugar cookie mixes in key lime, lemon, raspberry, cherry, and banana as well as chocolate and sour cream. Each is matched with a complementary frosting.
What You’ll Need
- Sugar Cookie Mix (or equivalent recipe)
- Pastry Fillings
- Lemon Bark or other decorations
- For these cookies, we used our lemon cream sugar cookie mix. We made it according to directions and cut the cookies with a small scalloped cookie cutter.
- Our lemon pastry filling is fantastic so we used that for the filling between the cookies. (This is soft filling, about the consistency of jam, and you can’t use too much or they will squish when you bite them. Fillings are loaded with flavor so it doesn’t take much. A thin coat across the cookie surface will do.)
- We made the frosting from the packet in the mix. We thinned it to a dipping consistency. We dipped the cookies hallway into the frosting, scraping the excess frosting off the bottom surface and back into the bowl.
- We sprinkled a little lemon bark on the cookies. Lemon bark is mixture of lemon candy and white chocolate and a delightful tart punch.
Cherry Fudge Dipped Sandwich Cookies
These are made exactly as the lemon cookies except that we used a cherry vanilla sugar cookie mix and Fudge Frosting in the center. For some of the cookies, we used a cherry filling. These were beautiful and scrumptious.
White Chocolate Tropical Macaroons with Lime Fresco Salt
We saved these for last. These are the most interesting of the group and I loved them. We tested them with and without the lime flavored salt and I definitely like them better with the salt. We put just a little salt on after they were baked, just a dusting. It made them intriguing and distinctive. I liked the little burst of the salt, I liked the occasional crunch of a crystal, and I liked the faint taste of lime salt on my lips. We made these exactly as the other macaroon cookies but we used our Pina Colada Macaroon mix, white chocolate, and a pineapple filling Your family and friends will remember these cookies for a long time.
What You’ll Need
- Pina Colada Macaroon Mix (or equivalent recipe)
- Pineapple Pastry Filling (or pineapple jam)
- White Chocolate Wafers
- Lime Fresco Sea Salt (This is an intriguing salt. We suspect that most of it goes on the rim of beverage glasses, a glass-rimmer. I like it sprinkled on Mexican food. We know a restaurant in Salt Lake that salts their store made tortilla chips with lime salt. Do a little experimenting and see what you like.)
We hope this gets you exploring with other cookies, fillings, and coating.
