Homemade Girl Scout Samoas!

It's girl scout cookie season! And because I'm broke, funemployed, and have some time on my hands, I decided to save $3.50 and make my own Samoas...

 I adapted this recipe from Bakingbites.com. These were fun and easy to make, but pretty time-consuming (2.5 hours). I didn't have an electric mixer and did everything by hand. I liked these cookies better than the originals because they had the perfect amount of sweetness: the cookies I baked offered a light sweet taste, and balanced well with the caramel coconut topping I made, which didn't taste as sugary as the topping on the boxed cookies. These homemade Samoas taste a million times better than the boxed Samoas, but that's just my biased opinion. :)

Homemade Samoas Recipe For the cookie dough-
Ingredients:
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1 cup butter
-1/2 sugar
-1/4 teaspoon baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
-2 tablespoons milk
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Make sure butter is soft.

3. Mix in flour, baking powder, and salt. Once mixed, add in milk and vanilla. Feel free to add  a little more milk as needed to make the dough come together. You should end up with a soft ball of dough. The dough shouldn't be too sticky because it will need to be rolled between wax paper next. If you end up with sticky dough, add a bit more flour to reach an appropriate level of stickiness.


4. Roll dough between pieces of wax paper. Use a 1 1/2 inch diameter circle cookie cutter to create rounds and use a straw to create holes in the middle of each round.

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until edges are golden. Let cool.

For the topping-
Ingredients:
-2 1/2 cups shredded coconut
-10 oz chewy caramels (I used Werther's Chewy Caramels)
-1/4 teaspoon salt
- at least 3 tablespoons milk
-8 oz dark or semisweet chocolate (I used Ghiradelli Semisweet chips)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Spread coconut over foil or parchment-lined baking sheet, and let bake for 15-20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden.

3. Unwrap caramels and place into microwave safe bowl with 4 tablespoons milk and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook on high for 3-4 minutes, stopping to stir a few times to help the caramel melt.

                                                  

4. When caramel is smooth, fold in toasted coconut using a spatula. This is where you can judge whether or not to add more milk. The recipe I used says 3 tablespoons. However, I say use at least 3, because as I folded the coconut into the caramel, I felt the need to add a couple more teaspoons of milk and reheat because it was too sticky and hard to spread. Plus, it worked out well because it made the topping a little less sugary, which in my opinion, created a perfect level of sweetness!

5. Spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 teaspoons of topping per cookie. Reheat topping for a few seconds in the microwave if it become too firm to spread.

6. Melt chocolate in microwave safe bowl in 45 second intervals. Dip the base of each cookie into the melted chocolate and place cookie on wax paper to cool.

7. The recipe I followed said to put remaining chocolate into a ziploc or piping bag and drizzle chocolate that way, but I really didn't have the patience for that...Take a fork and drizzle chocolate over the cooling cookies.

8. Let the cookies cool for at least 30 minutes because the chocolate has to harden and the topping has to set. Then they are ready to devour!