Samoa Girl Scout Cookies

I Love, LOVE,  LOVE! Samoa Girl Scout cookies!!!! Every spring when the girl scouts come out and sell their delectable cookies I always cave in and end up buying the ridiculously expensive box of Samoa cookies! I was browsing through some recipes online and found this cookie recipe and couldn’t pass it up! I ended up making them into bars, which is much speedier than the cookie version! The coconut caramel mixture is good and the melted chocolate is also pretty tasty!

Oven Temp: 300 @ first to brown coconut then 350 to bake cookies

Bake time 10-12 minutes

Ingredients:

Cookie Base:

• 1 cup of butter

• ½ cup sugar

• 2 cups flour

• ¼ tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp salt

• ½ tsp vanilla extract

• About 2 tbsp of milk

Cookie Topping:

• 3 cups of shredded coconut (sweetened)

• 12 ounces of good chewy caramel (I used Werther’s soft caramels but most any will do)

• ¼ tsp of salt

• 3 tbsp milk

• 8 oz of chocolate chips ( semi or milk work just fine)

• 2 tsp of milk to help keep chocolate from getting to hard

Cookie Base

1. In a bowl cream together butter and sugar. Slowly mix in flour, baking powder and salt.

2. Next stir in vanilla and milk, adding the milk in as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky. The dough should come together into a soft not really sticky ball. You can add extra flour if your dough is too sticky.

3. Roll your dough out in batches (2-3 batches). You can roll between pieces of wax paper to make it about ¼ inch thick. Use a 1 ½ inch round cookie cutter to make your rounds. Place it on wax paper. You can use a knife or something smaller to make the center hole.

4. Bake cookies 10-12 minutes until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are set. Let cool

Cookie topping:

1. While making cookies Preheat oven to 300 and put coconut in a pan to brown. Toast for about 15-20 minutes and stirring it about every 3-5 minutes, until coconut is golden brown. Set aside and let cool in baking sheet

2. Unwrap caramels and place in large microwave safe bowl. Add milk and salt. Cook on high for 3-4 minutes and stopping it to stir it up a few times to help the caramel melt and mix in the milk evenly. When it is smooth fold in toasted coconut with spatula. You will want to wait for this until you know most of your cookies are cooled off. If you need to you can reheat caramel mixture in the microwave.

3. Once when caramel is soft take about 2-3 teaspoons of caramel to put on the cookies.

4. While letting the topping on the cookie cool off melt chocolate in a small bowl. I added about 2 teaspoons of milk to the chocolate so when it cools it won’t be hard as rock!

5. Transfer remaining chocolate into a Ziploc bag. Snip the corner off and drizzle chocolate on the finished cookies.

If you want to make these into bars, all you do is roll out the dough onto a cookie sheet with wax paper. Let it bake until golden brown. Take the caramel topping and use a spatula to spread across. Cut with a pizza cutter to sizes you want. After it cools top with chocolate and if you want dip the bottom in chocolate!

Enjoy!!! These are highly addicting and yummy!

(pictures courtesy of bakingbites.com)