Orange You Glad I'm Your Main Squeeze?

So today is Valentine's Day and this year I don't have anyone to share such corny, lovey-dovey puns with. So, once again, I bonded with my sexy, red Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer and created these Orange Coconut Macaroons Kissed with Dark Chocolate.

Ok, I wasn't completely alone. Lyle Lovett, She and Him, and Missy Higgins provided just the right recipe of irony, melancholy, longing and retro-flavored optimism for such an occasion. I'm convinced that everything I cook or bake tastes better if made while listening to music I love. And, by the way, Lyle Lovett is my boyfriend. He just doesn't know it yet.

Orange Coconut Macaroons Kissed with Dark Chocolate

1/4 cup butter, room temperature

10 tablespoons cane sugar

2 pinches of kosher salt

The zest of one large orange

The juice of half a large orange

1 egg, beaten

3 cups of medium flaked coconut (Not the sugar coated yuckiness you find in baking isle but unadulterated, plain, flaked coconut)

About 2 to 2.5 ounces of good quality dark chocolate (I love Trader Joe's Organic 73% cocoa dark chocolate bar and about half the bar should suffice. God knows I don't believe in wasting chocolate.)

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Zest the orange and set aside. Do this first, because if you forget and juice the orange first, it's very tricky to zest a mushy orange. With a stand or hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the salt, egg, orange juice, orange zest and coconut. Mix until well incorporated. Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. All cookies seem to bake more evenly and hold their shape better when the dough is chilled.

Once chilled, cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and form mounds about the diameter of silver dollars. Bake 25 to 30 minutes until firm and the tops are golden brown and crispy. Let the cookies cool a bit before removing them from the parchment paper with a small spatula. If they don't hold together well, they're still malleable enough as you remove them from the paper to smoosh them back together. (Yes, "smoosh" is a technical term.)

Once the cookies have cooled, melt the chocolate. I prefer to create a double boiler with a glass Pyrex bowl with a lip that fits snugly in a small sauce pan filled with water or a small sauce pan and a slightly larger sauce pan filled with water. I know a lot of people like to melt chocolate in a microwave, but I always burned it when I used that method and it never melted evenly. Did you know that microwaving food changes its molecular structure? I got rid of my microwave last summer and haven't missed it once.

Transfer the macaroons to a piece of wax or parchment paper and arrange them so they're clustered in a circle and touching on all sides. This will insure that when you drizzle the chocolate on them the chocolate lands on the cookies, not on the wax paper spaces between the cookies. Using a wire whisk, flick (another technical term) the melted chocolate on the cookies. Transfer the cookies to the fridge to firm up and allow the chocolate to harden. Serve chilled or at room temperature. Who needs a sweetie when you have cookies like this? Oh, I hope Lyle didn't hear that. Yields 24 cookies, just the right amount for a party for one on Valentine's Day. ;0)

Afterthoughts: You'll likely have a some chocolate left in the pan. Again, wasting chocolate is sacrilegious, so whisk in some milk, heavy cream, a little sugar and a liqueur or choice and you'll have a decadent hot chocolate to enjoy with your cookies.