Gordon Ramsay’s Carrot Cake Macaroons

These carrot cake macaroons are not to be muddled up with French macarons, which are those delicate meringue spaceships that are full of sugar and can be a bit tricky to cook outside a professional pastry kitchen. These are the coconut macaroons of my childhood, updated to taste a lot like carrot cake but without all that butter icing. When cake is off the menu, have a couple of these to keep the sweet cravings at bay.

MAKES 18 MACAROONS

200g unsweetened desiccated coconut
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50g walnuts, chopped
1 large carrot, grated
75g golden caster sugar
4 egg whites
Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 170˚C/gas 3.
Put the coconut, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg into a bowl and mix well.
Add the chopped walnuts, grated carrot, sugar, egg whites and a pinch of salt and mix together until everything is fully incorporated.
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and drop 18–20 heaped dessertspoons of the mixture on to the tray, leaving a gap of at least 1cm between them. Shape the mounds so that they are roughly circular.
Put the tray into the preheated oven and bake for 15–20 minutes, until your carrot cake macaroons are golden and firm on the outside. Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.

PER MACAROON

KCAL 115

FAT (g) 9.0

SATURATES (g) 6.0

CARBS (g) 5.0

SUGARS (g) 5.0

FIBRE (g) 2.0

PROTEIN (g) 2.0

SALT (g) 0.05

Recipe extracted from Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Fit Food by Gordon Ramsay, published by Hodder & Stoughton, £25
Photo credit: Jamie Orlando Smith