Samoas
Girl Scout season is here! I told myself that I would try my best not to buy any cookies. Because they’re expensive and I eat a lot of them. I decided to try and make my favorite cookie instead. They turned out surprisingly good (both in looks and taste). Even though they took about 4 hours to make, from start to finish, I enjoyed making them. I didn’t have much going on Saturday afternoon, so it was a fun way to spend the day. Eating them is fun too. If I made these again, I would improve on the caramel spreading process for sure. This was the hardest part, and the cause of 8 broken cookies. It took me so long to spread the caramel/cocunut topping on, so it kept getting hard, and I would have to heat it up in the microwave to soften it up again. By the time I got to the last handful of cookies, the caramel didn’t even want to soften up even when heated. So that was that. Those cookies aren’t as caramely and are a bit on the chewy side, but still extremely edible and delicious.
Samoas
Ingredients
The cookie:
1 cup butter, soft
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
up to 2 tbsp milk
The caramel mixture:
3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened)
12-oz chewy caramels
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk
The chocolate:
8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate
Preparation
The cookie:
Preheat oven to 350F. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt at a low speed, followed by the vanilla and milk, adding in the milk as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky (it’s possible you might not need to add milk at all). The dough should come together into a soft, not-too-sticky ball. Add in a bit of extra flour if your dough is very sticky.
Roll the dough (working in two or three batches) out to about 1/4-inch thickness (or slightly less) and use a 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make rounds. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and use a knife (I used an apple corer), to cut a smaller center hole. Repeat with remaining dough.
Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are set. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
The topping:
Preheat oven to 300. Spread coconut evenly on a parchment-lined baking sheet (preferably one with sides) and toast 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden. Cool on baking sheet, stirring occasionally. Set aside.
Unwrap the caramels and place in a glass bowl with milk and salt. Place bowl on a pot of boiling water and stir caramel mixture until melted. When smooth, remove from heat and fold in toasted coconut with a spatula. Using the spatula, spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 tsp per cookie. Reheat caramel for a few seconds in the microwave if it gets too firm to work with.
The chocolate:
While topping sets up, melt chocolate in another glass bowl over a pot of boiling water. Dip the base of each cookie into the chocolate and place on a clean piece of parchment paper. Transfer all remaining chocolate (or melt a bit of additional chocolate, if necessary) into a piping bag or a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off and drizzle finished cookies with chocolate.
Let chocolate set completely before trying to eat (this takes a few hours, unfortunately). Fortunately for Tommy and I, we left for dinner just after I finished making these, so we didn’t have to be tortured by watching the chocolate get solidified. I had them as a second dessert when we got home from dinner.
The process improvement that I would make next time is with how the caramel topping is applied to the cookie. I would leave the caramel in the glass bowl over some simmering water (so that the caramel stays soft the entire time). I would then dip the cookie in the caramel, then dip it in the coconut. I think that this would save a lot of time too. The only thing you would have to be careful about is that the caramel is very hot when it is at this stage, so you might get a few burned fingertips if you’re not careful about dipping the cookies.
I bought a box of the REAL girl scout cookies on my way home from the store today (this is the ONLY box I am going to buy this year). I was shocked that I had to pay $3.50 for only 15 cookies! My cookies are bigger but the caramel is a bit harder than the REAL cookies. That’s probably because there are a bazillion preservatives in the REAL cookie’s caramel. Oh yeah, and I got about 45 cookies out of the deal, AND they’re bigger. So take that girl scouts!