Cherry Macaroons
Cherry Macaroons are the perfect valentines day treat. As I kid I always loved Valentine’s Day. A couple days before Valentine’s Day, my family would decorate a Valentine’s Day box with pretty red and pink hearts and, when no one was looking, we would slip little love notes to each other into the box. My mom would also put lots of Valentine’s Day candy in there too, which always went over well.
To honor this lovely holiday I wanted to make a festive dessert that was delicious and naturally sweetened. The first thing that came to mind was making coconut macaroons with goji berries. Goji berries are jam-packed with antioxidants and they are a pretty dark pink color. To my dismay, as I was mixing up my macaroons I witnessed my pretty pink goji berries slowly turn everything orange! I decided to try again with dried cherries which worked perfectly; they kept their color and they tasted delicious!
This Cherry Macaroon recipe is really easy and only has six ingredients. It is naturally sweetened with dried cherries and maple syrup so you can pop them in your mouth guilt-free. For more guilt-free dairy free desserts, check out my cookbook Healthy Dairy Free Desserts.
Cherries are a great source of antioxidants, which can help lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. They can also help with digestion and sleep. It can be hard to find dried cherries at the grocery store, you can get them on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca.
The great thing about baking with coconut oil is that it is a saturated fat that is very stable and can withstand high temperatures without becoming rancid. Also, coconut oil promotes weight loss and is very well absorbed. It is used as an energy source in the body instead of being stored as fat.
Cherry Macaroons Video
See how easy it is to make these yummy Cherry Macaroons in this fun cooking video with Briana Santoro. Birana is a Certified Nutritionist and the author of the #1 Best Selling cookbook Get Naked In The Kitchen – Healthy Recipes That Are Proud To Bare It All. She is the founder and Chief Product Undresser at The Naked Label, a tell-it-like-it-is website that undresses the food we eat.
Cherry Macaroons Recipe
(gluten free, vegan)
Prep time: 10 minutes
Inactive Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes
Serving size: two dozen bite size cherry macaroons
Ingredients:
- 1 cup dried cherries
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
- 1 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
- 1/2 tsp salt (preferably Himalayan rock salt)
Directions:
- Soak cherries in water for 30 minutes to an hour to soften them up.
- Preheat the oven to 300F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.
- Once the cherries are done soaking, blend them in a food processor with 1/4 cup of the soaking water along with maple syrup, coconut oil and vanilla extract to create a pink paste.
- In a medium sized bowl mix the coconut and salt into the cherry paste.
- Scoop 1 Tbsp sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes, or until the bottom of the macaroons are golden brown. You can place the macaroons fairly close together because their shape won’t change while cooking.
- Remove the macaroons from the oven and let them cool for 30 minutes before storing or serving.
- For a chocolate coating whisk together 1/2 Tbsp melted coconut oil, 3 Tbsp cacao or cocoa powder and 1/2 Tbsp maple syrup to drizzle on top.
Share your Valentines Day traditions in the comments section!
- 1 cup dried cherries
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
- 1 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
- 1/2 tsp salt (preferably Himalayan rock salt)
- Soak cherries in water for 30 minutes to an hour to soften them up.
- Preheat the oven to 300F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.
- Once the cherries are done soaking, blend them in a food processor with 1/4 cup of the soaking water along with maple syrup, coconut oil and vanilla extract creating a pink paste.
- In a medium sized bowl mix the coconut and salt into the cherry paste.
- Scoop 1 Tbsp sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes, or until the bottom of the macaroons are golden brown. You can place the macaroons fairly close together because their shape won’t change while cooking.
- Remove the macaroons from the oven and let them cool for 30 minutes before storing or serving.
- For a chocolate coating whisk together 1/2 Tbsp melted coconut oil, 3 Tbsp cacao or cocoa powder and 1/2 Tbsp maple syrup to drizzle on top.
Mmmmmm. These look yummy. I’ll make them for sure!
My son would love these! I can’t wait to try them. Would probably go well with coconut ice cream. Yum!
I love cherries, well I am obssesed with cherrie, I like coconut and macaroons so this is a recipe for me – thank you! looks very very nice!
Wow. These look so delicious & so simple to make !
WOW! I can’t wait to try these. I have a bag of dried cherries in my freezer, too! Thanks for this recipe and I do look forward to trying them soon. you
I made these tonight, they were very good however did NOT stick together. I’m disappointed, I was going to take these to a meeting. Now what to do with all these crumbs?
Hi Kristin, I’m so sorry to hear that they didn’t stick together. I have made them several times and so have my recipe testers and no one has had a problem. Did you make any substitutions? Did you pack the macaroons into the tablespoon tightly before putting it on the baking sheet? The crumbs would be delicious over chia pudding, oats or ice cream!
I wonder if you added an egg white or two if they would hold together better?
Hi Cindy, did they fall apart on you? I find they always stay together really well for me, the key is to really pack them into the tablespoon before putting them on the baking sheet.
I too made them and they fell apart. I packed them as as you noted to the other submitters. Quite disappointing…
I’m so sorry to hear that Ralph. After Kristin had them fall apart before her meeting I sent the recipe to a couple people to test it and they said the macaroons stayed together just fine. Are you using 100% maple syrup? I live in Canada so it is readily available but I know that is not the case everywhere. The only other thing it could be would be the cherry paste, maybe it is too chunky?
One thing that may help them hold together is to substitute 1 cup of the shredded coconut for 1/2 cup coconut butter.
My family enjoyed the cookies and although I did substitute a combo of honey and jaggery since we were out of maple syrup and thawed organic cherries instead of dried it worked fine. The trick to getting the batter to stay together is definitely packing into cookie scoop so I’m glad I saw the comments before making them! I doubled the batch and added mini chocolate chips and everyone loved them. Thanks for the recipe, Jesse!
I’m so happy you and your family liked them Alicia!!! Adding mini chocolate chips would taste fantastic, I’ll have to try that next time I make them. I’m happy to hear that it worked with honey, jaggery and thawed cherries!
[…] Doing a little preliminary research before I tossed the berries in my coffee grinder, I knew others had tried goji macaroons and found the berries’ color a little…off-putting. If I […]
Just made these this evening. Delish! I used fresh cherries (had some lovely babies on hand) so as a result, I didn’t have any water from soaking the cherries to use in the recipe. Therefore, I added 1/4 cup tart cherry juice diluted a tad with water. I, too, had a problem getting them to stick together. I had enough coconut on hand to keep adding until it soaked up juice enough to get sticky. Yes, packing them in a table spoon really hard works wonders!
I’ve had a tough time finding paleo desserts that end up tasty. THIS ONE is AWESOME!!! Thanks for sharing!
I’m so happy you liked them Tracy, thank you so much for coming back here to let me know. I actually haven’t made them with fresh cherries so I’m really happy to hear that it worked in the end! I have LOTS of grain free dessert recipes that are naturally sweetened on my website!
I’ve been reading your recipes and my my my! Lots of yummy looking recipes! Can’t wait to try!
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