Always Loved Coconut Cookies

Old-fashioned rolled coconut cookies are the kind of recipe handed down on a flour-dusted index card. The dough chills hard, rolls out like sugar cookie dough, and gets cut into shapes before a quick bake in a hot oven. The result is sixty crisp-edged, tender-centered cookies flecked with sweet coconut.

Evaporated milk in the batter is the secret. It brings a richer, almost caramelized dairy flavor that fresh milk can’t match, and it makes the cookies tender despite the rolling-out treatment that usually toughens dough.

The long chill is non-negotiable. Several hours in the fridge lets the butter firm up and the gluten relax, so the dough handles cleanly without sticking. Skip it and you’ll fight the dough across a sticky counter.

Pro Tips

• Toast the coconut on a dry sheet pan for a few minutes before adding to the dough. This deepens the coconut flavor and prevents that raw-shred chewiness in the finished cookie.
• Use unsweetened shredded coconut if you can, since the dough already has plenty of sugar. Sweetened flakes turn the cookies cloying.
• Roll the dough between two sheets of parchment paper. This eliminates extra flour from the rolling surface, which keeps the cookies tender instead of dry.
• Re-roll scraps gently and only once. Each re-roll toughens the dough, so the third batch will always be denser than the first.

Variations

• Add a teaspoon of grated lime or lemon zest to the dough for a tropical brightness against the coconut.
• Dip half of each cooled cookie in melted chocolate and sprinkle with toasted coconut.
• Sandwich two cookies around lemon curd or raspberry jam for a fancier filled version.