A couple weeks ago the Star Tribune newspaper published an electronic book, The Cookie Book, Ten Years of Winning Recipes from Our Holiday Baking Contest.  Available through various app stores (I bought mine through Apple’s) it is probably the best $3 I've spent recently or in a long time.  Chock full of interesting recipes, it is, and I chose another one from the book for my third batch of Christmas cookies, Snowball Clippers.  It sounded macaroon-y and I love macaroons.

This is a really nice recipe, especially if you have everything in house, as I [mostly] did.  I was happy to use up the coconut that’s been in the fridge for quite a while. 

Snowball Clippers

Source: Star Tribune's 2012 "The Cookie Book"

Yield: 4-6 dozen cookies (I think it made 5 dozen)

This was a finalist in the 2011 Strib holiday baking contest.

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup sour cream (Ed.: Please, use a sour cream such as Daisy—one that is not laden with stabilizers and other crap.)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups shredded coconut

1/2 cup miniature chocolate chips

4 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder, and reserve. In a bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, beat sugar, sour cream, butter and egg white until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture and mix until just incorporated.

Add vanilla extract and coconut, and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips. Shape dough into 3/4-inch balls (if dough is sticky, dampen your fingers with water), and place 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheets. Bake just until coconut begins to brown, about 18 to 22 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 2 minutes before transferring cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Line baking sheets with wax paper. Dip bottoms of cooled cookies in melted chocolate and place cookies, chocolate-side down, on wax paper. Refrigerate until chocolate sets, about 30 minutes.

I used the whisk implement that attaches to my Braun stick blender to beat the egg white until it was nice and foamy.

Here are couple pictures of before and after baking.

And another picture of the finished cookies, dipped and chilled.  They released from the parchment very cleanly after an hour or so in the auxiliary refrigerator (the garage).

Notes:  My small portioner scoop worked a treat for these.   My fingers and hands were minimally messy at the end of this project.

I chopped regular chocolate chips instead of using miniatures.  I think they showed more melting, resulting in cookies that almost look like they have chocolate swirled through them.

Please, use a sour cream such as Daisy—one that is not laden with stabilizers and other crap.

These are well worth making again.  Yum!  I hope there will be at least a few left for someone else to enjoy.