It creeps me out that macarons so often get mistaken for macaroons. If you want a festive macaron, get thee to Pike Place Market and try the pumpkin macarons at Le Panier. They are probably delightful but I wouldn’t know because the 5-year-olds gobbled them up before I even got a nibble. Macarons tends to vanish quickly in my house.
I prefer a macaroon; a soft in the middle but crunchy on the outside coconut delight. And If you want a Hallowe’en macaroon, this Real Simple recipe is an absolutely easy base. You need egg-whites, sugar, salt, shredded coconut and vanilla and you’re set. I wanted to make them festive so we decided to make our macaroons into ‘spider macaroons’.
Once you have your finished macaroons it is pretty to make them into spiders. I melted some chocolate chips in the microwave, and then we dipped the macaroons and stuck some pretzel legs in the chocolate. Trader Joe’s candy sunflower seeds made fun spider eyes and we let them harden on parchment paper. And even though the boys were not as nuts about the macaroons as they were about macarons I was pretty happy that I was left with lots of these treat to enjoy. The boys really liked whipping up the egg-whites and dipping the pretzel sticks in chocolate.
(PS. my oh so smart mom let me know that you should not use a plastic bowl to whip up egg-whites and I didn’t believe her, but apparently she’s right. So mom, if you are reading this, I actually looked it up.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)