Recipe: Almond Joy Cookies

This past weekend, I had a few friends over to make hamentashen for Purim. We made the traditional prune ones, but we also tried making pumpkin pie ones (essentially using pumpkin pie filling as the cookie filling). To make that we used sweetened condensed milk, but only a little bit, so I had almost an entire can left. So the clear thing to do next was look up a recipe that called for sweetened condensed milk!

I found this coconut cookie recipe on the Mom on Timeout website (well, Google brought me there). There are only four ingredients, so it's really easy!

Ingredients

• 1 14 oz bag sweetened coconut flakes
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• ⅔ cup chopped lightly salted almonds
• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (regular or fat-free works)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper* and set aside.
3. In a large bowl combine coconut, chocolate chips, almonds, and sweetened condensed milk.
4. Stir until combined.
5. Scoop out dough with a cookie scoop onto prepared baking sheet.
6. Moisten the tips of your fingers with water and shape into discs. Pat the tops flat.
7. Bake cookies for 12 to 14 minutes or until tips of coconut are just starting to turn golden brown.
8. Let cool on baking sheet.
9. Store cookies in an airtight container.

I mixed it up by using half chocolate chips and half white chocolate chips. I also made my cookies more rounded rather than flattened, but I'm not sure that really matters.

*There is a note at the bottom of the web page that specifically says you MUST use parchment paper and not wax paper. Heed this advice! I used wax paper and the cookies glued themselves to it. I ended up just squishing the bits that weren't stuck back into their original mixture form, just slightly more toasted then before. I figure I can put the bits into pancakes or waffles, maybe banana bread... Nothing wrong with double-baked coconut!