Samoa Macaron

What??  A French Samoa Macaron?  Sounds like an oxymoron...

But no, the "Samoa" here refers to one of the most popular Girls Scout cookies.  The cookie consists of vanilla cookie coated with caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and laced with chocolate stripes.  I've had it before, but it was so sweet it made my teeth hurt. 

As an experiment, I decided to make Samoa macarons.  How about a coconut meringue shell, caramel buttercream filling, and chocolate?

I substituted about half of the almond meal with dessicated coconut (that I pulverized in the food processor to a fine powder).  My macarons always come out hollow, so as another experiment, I added a tablespoon of cornstarch to see if that will add stability.

Wait, I lied.  There were times when my macarons didn't come out hollow...and those were chocolate macarons.  Those were the only ones that didn't come out hollow.  All I did was add two tablespoons of cocoa powder to the regular batter and that seemed to fill out the empty space.

So I added the cornstarch, and baked it a little longer than usual.  I did some research and found out that underbaking can cause hollows.

They turned out quite nice...at least on the outside.  I filled them with caramel buttercream, and rolled the outside with finely chopped chocolates and cashews.

How were they?  Not bad.  The coconut flavor was subtle at first, then kicked in later as they're being chewed.  And chew you must.  They were pretty chewy for macaron--don't know if that's due to the coconut powder or because I overbaked them.  Again, they were hollow....
Or so I thought.  I was delighted to find out that there were a few that weren't!!
Was it the cornstarch that did the trick?  Maybe.  It's definitely worth playing around with.