Macaroons rewards a little know-how: how to choose them, cook them, store them, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 16 recipes to cook with them.

What are macaroons?

Macaroons are chewy, dome-shaped cookies built on whipped egg white and sweetened shredded coconut, with no flour holding them together. The egg white sets like a meringue in the oven while the coconut toasts at the edges.

You get a crisp shell over a soft, moist center, with a little sugar and sometimes sweetened condensed milk for extra chew.

Do not confuse them with French macarons, the smooth almond-flour sandwich cookies with a buttercream or ganache filling. Same root word, completely different cookie.

A macaroon is a rough, craggy coconut mound; a macaron is a polished pastel disc. Reach for the wrong one and the result will be wrong.

Because they skip wheat flour entirely, coconut macaroons are a fixture on the Passover table and a reliable gluten-free treat the rest of the year.

How to Use Coconut Macaroons

Most of the time you eat them straight, often with the bottoms dipped in dark chocolate, which firms into a snappy shell against the soft coconut. A short bake at 325°F (160°C) until the peaks are golden gives the best contrast of crisp outside and tender inside.

They also work crushed into other desserts. Around Passover, recipes like Kosher for Passover Cheesecake and Passover Cheesecake lean on crumbled macaroons for a flourless crust, since they bind and brown the way a graham base would without any wheat.

Scandinavian Apple Cake folds them in as a textural layer, and Tempting Trifle Cheesecake uses them as sweet, coconut-scented rubble between richer elements.

Keep them whole as a plated cookie, or crush them when you need a no-flour crust or crumble.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Coconut leans tropical, so macaroons sit naturally beside dark chocolate, espresso, citrus, and stone fruit. A plate of them next to coffee is the classic move, and a good dark chocolate dip keeps the sweetness in check.

The most common mistake is a soggy, spreading cookie. That happens when the batter is too wet or underbaked, so the mound slumps instead of holding a peak. Pack the coconut mixture firmly, mound it tall, and bake until the ridges color.

Whipping the whites to soft peaks first, then folding in coconut, gives more lift than dumping everything together.

The other failure is burning. Coconut and exposed sugar scorch fast, so pull the tray the moment the tips turn deep gold.

Substitutes

If you only need the coconut-and-meringue effect inside a larger dessert, crushed amaretti or other crisp almond cookies give a similar sweet crunch. They bring almond rather than coconut flavor, but the chewy-sweet role is close.

For a flourless crust where a recipe wants crumbled macaroons, a graham or digestive crumb crust works, as long as the meal is not Passover or gluten-free.

There is no clean one-for-one swap for a whole macaroon. The closest is a coconut cluster or a coconut-heavy drop cookie, since the defining traits are the shredded coconut and the chewy meringue bind.

Buying and Storage

Bakery and packaged macaroons sell year-round and stock heavily in spring for Passover, often in tins, sometimes chocolate-dipped. Look for ones that are moist and chewy; a stale macaroon goes hard and sandy.

Store them airtight at room temperature, where they keep their chew for about a week.

Because the exposed coconut stales faster than a denser cookie, seal them well and press out the air.

They also freeze cleanly for up to three months: layer them between parchment so they do not stick, and thaw at room temperature. The coconut holds moisture, so the texture survives freezing better than most cookies.

Chocolate-dipped ones may bloom slightly when frozen, a harmless gray haze that does not affect flavor.

Quick facts

In Chinese

杏仁饼

British (UK) term

Macaroons

en français

macarons

en español

macarrones

Recipes using macaroons

There are 16 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 16 recipes