Recently, craving a sweet treat, we whipped up a batch of these coconut macaroons from Kitchn. (Note: macaroons are not to be confused with macarons!) This was a fantastic recipe to use as our inspiration.
We had just received a food delivery that included some fresh coconut, so we wanted a way to use it in a baked good. Due to lockdowns here in Dubai, we are doing more baking than ever. Seems like this is happening all over the world at the moment!
Coconut Macaroons with Lower Carb Content
Coconut macaroons are traditionally made with shredded coconut, which keeps in the pantry for a long time. So these are wonderful pantry-friendly cookies that you can make while you have more time at home. But we definitely recommend trying this macaroon recipe with fresh coconut if you can, because the natural sweetness of fresh coconut shines through, allowing you to cut back on the sugar a little.
This means lower carbs. People on a diabetes diet know all about the importance of low-carb eating.
Gluten-Free Cookies
Macaroons are also perfect if you are on a gluten-free diet. They don’t contain any flour or grains of any kind.
How to Reduce the Sugar Content of Coconut Macaroons
This might seem obvious. Reducing the sugar content in anything just means adding less sugar, right?
Well sure, but in a sweet treat, the sweetness has to come from somewhere.
You could replace the sugar entirely with a sugar-free alternative such as monk fruit. You could also fold dried fruit in to your macaroon mix – however, be aware that although you may be replacing the sugar with a more nourishing sweetener, you still definitely need to watch the carbohydrate content of dried fruit as it can be just as high as sugar.
We simply reduced the sugar content by half. The original recipe called for sweetened shredded coconut, so by replacing this with fresh coconut and cutting the sugar in half, we saved on quite a bit of carb content.
We were also careful to keep our cookies on the smaller side. This recipe makes 24 coconut macaroons, so if your version produces fewer cookies, be sure to recalculate the carb content of your serving size if you have diabetes or are on a low-carb diet.
Roasty Toasty or Pale and Pure?
The paleness or goldenness of your macaroons is up to you. Remove your cookies from the oven a little sooner than specified if you like them blonde.
We like them golden brown, and we toasted our coconut first to get that nice savory flavor. We don’t like too much sweetness as a general rule so our “sweet treats” are usually less sweet than the average recipe. We loved the little hit of salt in this recipe, which brought out the roasty flavor of the toasted coconut.
Coconut Macaroon Recipe Modifications
We took the Kitchn macaroon recipe and made these changes:
- Replace the sweetened, shredded coconut with fresh, unsweetened coconut. (Ours was pre-grated so we toasted it up in a dry pan.)
- Cut the granulated sugar from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup.
- Where there is the option to use vanilla or almond extract, we used almond because it complements the toasted flavor so well. Some extracts contain sugar, so check the ingredients of the brand you are using to be super sure of your carb content in 1 teaspoon. We used Simply Organic almond extract.
Fresh Coconut Macaroon Nutrition Info
Using our modifications, if your recipe makes 24 cookies, each cookie will have the following nutritional content:
Find the directions for these coconut macaroons here at Kitchn.
Do you have a diabetes-friendly recipe to share? Would you like to see it published here? Submit your recipe to info@diapointme.com. Don’t forget to include a link to your recipe (if published online), a high-res image of the final dish, and your full name and contact details.
