I’m writing this on Mother’s Day while my mom takes a well deserved nap. We just went for a beautiful, warm walk and had a great lunch. I’m making her favorite tomato tart for dinner. I’ve been reflecting more on life this week and I’m feeling so grateful for the connections and experiences I’ve had. After a 1.5 hour drive in the rain, overcoming my back pain, and taking my grandmother to a doctor’s appointment, the week ended with a trip to our favorite restaurant. For mother’s day I made brown butter coconut cookies dipped in caramel and chocolate.

Brown Butter Coconut Cookies

This week has been a bit rainy and gray, but my spirits have been high. I started the week helping my dad move some furniture at a log cabin in the Maine woods. It had a cute yard, balcony, and a brick-colored facade. I started daydreaming while we moved up and down the stairs of owning my own house one day. Small, cozy, and quiet. So I’ve been making decisions aligned with saving more money in the hopes that in a couple years I can find the perfect place to live. I want to get a dog, too. 

On Wednesday I got in the car early and drove over an hour down the coast to Kennebunk. A tourist destination filled with ice cream stores, clothing shops, and novelty souvenirs. When I first arrived I was blown away by the greenery and vast ocean views. Quaint New England style architecture. A small village of stores and restaurants that would make an idyllic book cover. I met with a dessert shop owner and ice cream entrepreneur and we talked for over an hour. About creativity, challenges, ideas, and art. It was a great and uplifting afternoon that left me feeling dreamy. Hopeful. 

Painting + Baking

I’ll be making custom paintings for their menu and brainstorming ideas for some gourmet desserts. My creativity has been stretched this week, and I’ve been revisiting an old approach I had to cooking. Layered, artistic desserts with unique flavor combinations. I’m pushing myself to not just make humble pies and cakes but to find combinations of flavors and textures that make people think. I typically am more of a fan of a really good, perfectly-made pie than a deconstructed apple dessert. But I’m giving myself permission to let my imagination soar.

One of the desserts I’ve been developing is an ode to my time in Southeast Asia. With sticky rice, brown butter toasted coconut, palm sugar, tamarind, peanuts, and lime. Maybe lemongrass custard, too, like the ice cream I had in Vietnam. So I’ve been thinking about tropical flavors and specifically toasted coconut. When I made my pina colada ice cream last year I saved some toasted coconut to snack on and it was incredible. Sweet, salty, crunchy, and buttery. I was craving cookies, so I decided to put that brown butter and coconut essence into an elevated, artistic cookie. They would be a gift for Mother’s Day, too.

Toasted Coconut Cookie Dough

My brown butter coconut cookies would be packed with toasted coconut for a sweet and salty base. But I also dreamed of a unique cookie fit for a bakery. Dipped in caramel, or chocolate, and rolled in coconut shavings. So I decided to do both – make a deep, dark caramel and dip one end in that. And dip another end in dark chocolate. Garnish the cookies with coconut shavings and sea salt. Sort of like my favorite girl scout cookies. On Thursday I got to work and opened a big bag of coconut shavings. I readied my butter, flour, eggs, and chopped up a chocolate bar for later. The recipe starts with brown butter, like all of my favorite cookies. 

Instead of making brown butter and adding the coconut after the sugar and eggs, I decided to toast the coconut directly in the brown butter. With a little vanilla and cinnamon for warmth. It almost toasted the coconut too much when I took the bubbling amber liquid off the heat. From the residual heat. So I stirred and stirred to make sure it was all evenly browned. The smell was deep and dark and the coconut was fragrant. I waited for it to cool briefly and then added brown sugar, white sugar, and eggs. It’s typically a loose, dark batter until I add the dry ingredients. But the coconut thickened it a lot. So I removed some flour from my recipe. 

An Afternoon of Baking Cookies

I added the sifted flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the pan and worked it into a dough with my spatula. So thick, fudgy, and filled with jagged shreds of golden coconut. I wanted to eat the batter with a spoon. I considered adding chocolate chips or caramel shards, which would be fantastic, but I had my sights set on something more artistic. Before I ate lunch, I scooped my brown butter coconut cookies and placed them in the fridge to chill. To develop flavor. In the recipe I’ve removed this step – simply because the batter is so thick. They didn’t spread at all and I had to press them down. Keeping them warm will help.

The flavor will be just as amazing, so don’t worry. I baked these in the afternoon, 4 at a time to account for spread, and smushed them down into glorious discs of deeply caramelized coconut and sugar. Almost like a macaroon crossed with a cookie. I let them cool on the counter and moved onto the glazes and garnishes. Envisioning a corner covered in amber caramel and sea salt and an abutting corner slicked with dark chocolate and coconut. I contemplated which to do first and ultimately settled on the caramel. The chocolate would need to sit in the fridge to harden and the heat of the caramel would make things messy. 

Caramel + Chocolate Shell

So I started by heating sugar and water in a pan over high heat. It bubbled slowly and surely, and after what felt like an eternity I had a thick, golden liquid. I like a deep, dark caramel, so I cooked it for a few extra seconds until it became amber-colored. Then, I took it off the heat and added a couple pats of butter. I carefully whisked it up into a luscious caramel sauce. And I knew I had to work very quickly. If you don’t want caramel to shatter your teeth, you add something that, well, won’t shatter your teeth. Adding butter means it’s soft at room temperature and hard in the fridge. If you want it to be pourable, you add a good amount of cream or coconut milk. You can even whip it if it has enough heavy cream. 

The reason I added butter was to keep the caramel chewy at room temperature. Adding cream or milk would make the caramel too loose, and a hot day could ruin them. Making a straight up caramel without butter would crack your teeth. A little butter doesn’t dramatically change the texture of a hard caramel. Like a creme brûlée crown. I proceeded to dip my cookies quickly in the caramel and place them on parchment paper to set. Trying not to burn my hands in the process. I remembered to sprinkle on some sea salt, too, before they set. And I had to re-warm the caramel to finish my last cookies. It hardens fast. 

Family Dinner + Dessert

I tested one of my brown butter coconut cookies to see if the texture was easy to chew. It was perfect. Like that light shattering caramel layer on creme brûlée. They were now cool to the touch, so I shifted my focus to the chocolate shell layer. Unlike caramel, I didn’t add anything to my melted chocolate so that it would set into a hard shell. If you want to get really fancy you can temper the chocolate. But I don’t mind fridge-hardened chocolate. I used a good, dark chocolate bar and chopped it up, simply microwaving it in a bowl until loose. I dipped the edges of my cookies in the molten pool and placed them back on the parchment to cool. Quickly I added coconut shavings on top.

When they were done, I put them in the fridge to help the chocolate set. And they were done! I enjoyed one for dessert that night, blown away by the combination of the crunchy caramel, buttery, coconut cookie, and dark chocolate bitterness. There’s a section where the cookie has both caramel and chocolate on it which was my favorite bite. The touch of sea salt on top made it all pop. The texture of the cookie itself is fudgy, rich, and filled with crunchy, buttery coconut. They’re so good! My mom loved hers. And here we are on Mother’s Day. I’ve got to go make dinner now. And I can’t wait to have another cookie!

Happy Mother’s Day!

I know a lot of people say this, but I truly have the best mom on earth. She is a superhero. I won’t write a long, sappy essay about how much I love her. But she is my best friend and my sun. She has the week off from work, so the Mother’s Day togetherness will continue for a few more days. And in less than a year from now she’ll retire. I can’t wait to see how healthy and relaxed she becomes once the stress of working is behind her. I will continue to spoil her rotten with homemade pizza, tomato tarts, and brown butter coconut cookies!

Thank you for reading. Be sure to check out my art prints and recipe cards on Etsy. I have over 100! Use code THEFORKEDRING for 25% off. See you next week!

Print Pin

Brown Butter Coconut Cookies

A chewy cookie filled with toasted coconut and toped with chocolate and caramel

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword caramel, chocolate, coconut, cookies

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author theforkedring

Ingredients

• 14 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp heavy cream
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 cup AP Flour
• 1/4 cup bread flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 1/3 cup water
• 1 cup dark chocolate
• 1 1/2 tbsp flaky sea salt

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Melt 12 tbsp unsalted butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Cook until it begins to darken and bubble, then remove from heat.
• Add 1 tbsp heavy cream, vanilla extract, and 3 cups of shredded coconut and stir to combine.
• Add 2/3 cup white sugar and 1/3 cup brown sugar and stir to combine.
• In a separate large bowl, sift together the AP flour, bread flour, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt.
• Add the 2 whole eggs to the coconut mixture and stir to combine. Add your dry ingredients after until no streaks remain.
• Scoop 8 cookies onto 2 large baking sheets, spacing 2-3” apart to account for spread.
• Bake for 12-15 minutes until slightly gooey in the middle and golden around the edges.
• Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for at least 10-15 minutes to firm.
• In a stock pot or sauté pan, combine 1 1/3 cups water and 1 1/3 cups white sugar. Stir to combine.
• Cook over high heat until bubbling and beginning to brown in color. Remove from heat and add 2 tbsp unsalted butter and carefully stir.
• Quickly dip each cookie into the caramel on one edge and place on parchment paper or a silicon baking mat to cool. Do not let the caramel touch your skin.
• Sprinkle caramel before it hardens with a touch of flaky sea salt. Once cookies cool and caramel hardens, melt dark chocolate in a double boiler.
• Once liquid and shiny, dip each cookie into the chocolate on an overlapping edge with the caramel. Sprinkle with shredded coconut and let cool.

Notes

• You can chill your cookie dough and bake within a day or two. Just let the dough thaw completely before baking (or smush the cookies down halfway through to save on time). 
• I like a darker caramel, but it will continue to cook and darken after you take it off the heat. So the ideal color is light amber when you add the butter. 
• Do not touch hot caramel! Do not touch hot caramel!