Divine COCONUT macaroons

I have a recent obsession with coconut. I believe it came about because of my pregnancy with our 3rd son, Joel. My palette seems to become a bit more diverse with ever pregnancy and this time it was coconut and coffee that I started craving with overwhelming drive. I was blessed to receive a full batch of GF coconut macaroons from a friend when I gave birth to Joel in July. This recipe is from her! We tried a recipe we found online a while back and were dissapointed with how meringue-y they came out. They were good, but not what we were hoping for.

Anything tasting or smelling of coconut is to be aquired. I don't understand why pregnancy triggered this, as just months ago the thought of chewing on raw coconut was unthinkable and could elicit a full body quiver, but not so anymore. Just yesterday I opened a bag of grated coconut and popped in a mouthful. Even the sound of the bag... it's delicious all by itself. It's much like the sound that a bag of powdered sugar or brown sugar makes. It's that smell that the baking isle holds. All baking isles smell the same, regardless of the store. They smell like brown sugar, powdered sugar and coconut and I can just hear the sound of the rectangular platic bags as I pick them up and press them to my nose. I'm sure there's someone who can relate to this.

That is quite enough of the romatic side of coconut:

Here's the recipe - taken from the back of the "Baker's" brand coconut and modified to be free of poison (gluten, of course) - one great part is that there's NO xanthum gum!

Sift together:

1 pkg shredded coconut (I toasted it BEFORE making the cookies because I prefer toasted coconut over fresh - most of it toasts when you are making the cookies, but not all, so I made sure it was ALL toasted before)

6 tbls tapioca starch

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

slowly add in:

4 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla or almond extract

Stir until well blended and drop tbls fulls onto cookie sheet

Bake at 325 for 20 minutes.

Next time I make these I'm going to try and grind the pre toasted coconut just a bit before making up the cookie batter. I think this will give them a bit more of a true "cookie" feel, as they won't have giant grated coconut peices sticking out - but who knows?