Raspberry Macaroons

Before I get into our first recipe, let me explain a few things:

1 - I am not a professional chef. I love food and enjoy cooking, but I am not perfect. I will post the recipe exactly as I made the food, but check my notes and reviews, because I may very well mention a few things I wish I would have done differently. 

2- Any ratings given are from my husband, who has never been asked to rate food on a scale of 1-10. I told him with all my recipes, I'd like him to rate it as an "Every day food" and as an "Emergency food". The rating system is very subjective and may need some tweaking and fine tuning as we get further down the road. That said, let's start our journey!

This recipe comes from a fellow Shelf Reliance Consultant. It uses only 2 ingredients (plus water). Those are: THRIVE Freeze-Dried Raspberries and THRIVE Macaroon Mix (Beware when you open the Macaroon mix - you might spend more time than you want just standing and inhaling the heavenly sweet coconut aroma!) 

Start by preheating your oven to 350 F. Grease a cookie sheet.

In a small bowl, place 1/2 cup THRIVE Raspberries. Add enough water to just barely cover them. *Note: since Freeze-Dried products are so light, they tend to float, and it makes it harder for the items on top to rehydrate as well as the ones on bottom. Occasional stirring will help with this.*  Let the berries rehydrate for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, add 2 cups of THRIVE Macaroon mix, and 4 Tbsp of Hot water.Stir until all the mix is moistened. Here's what those steps will look like.

After the berries are rehydrated, you'll want to drain off any excess water. The amount of water you need to rehydrate varies based on the size and shape of the container you are using. You will have to play with it a little bit to find just the right amount. You don't want to add too much water, or else when you drain off the excess, you'll be losing a lot of the raspberry juices. So you want to drain only as little water as possible.

Once drained, take a spoon or fork, and mash the berries up into a puree, then dump into the macaroon mix and stir. It will look something like this when you're done.

Then you'll drop the dough by spoonfuls onto your cookie sheet. I did mine in mini 1 tsp size mounds, because I was taking these to a party for people to try, and wanted bite-sized samples. It made 33 little bite-sized cookies. Smaller cookies like these will bake in 8-12 minutes, depending on the sheet and the oven you're using. Larger cookies will take 12-15 minutes. You know they're done when the tops start to get a little golden brown. Let them cool on a wire rack before eating. Here's what ours looked like, you'll notice some are missing in the corner - we had some hungry family members who couldn't wait until Mommy took the picture.

My husband loves these and rated them a 10/10 as both an every day food and an emergency food. Since the Gold Standard in his rating system is now a macaroon, I'm not sure how non-dessert foods will measure up on his scale, but we'll just have to see moving forward.

From opening the cans to taking these out of the oven, this recipe took 20 minutes, including bake time. Here's the final recipe:

RASPBERRY MACAROONS

2 cups THRIVE macaroon mix

4 Tbsp hot water

1/2 THRIVE raspberries, reconstituted and mashed.

Combine mix with water. Add mashed berries.

Drop by spoonfuls onto greased sheet.

Bake at 350 until tops start getting golden brown (8-15 minutes).