Samoa Cookies

I came across this post last week, and mentioned it to Wonder Daddy. Unexpectedly, his eyes lit up and he squeaked "Did she have a recipe for Samoas?"

So, instead of a birthday cake this year I made him these!

In a nutshell, these are crisp buttery wafers, topped with a scoop of chewy coconut-caramel mixture, and then dunked in and drizzled with chocolate.

The recipe says to roll the dough out in a few batches, then cut with a 1.5" cookie cutter, then use a big straw to punch out the center...aw nuts. Just divide the dough in half, roll into two logs, chill, and cut into 1/4" discs. No one will miss the hole in the middle, and besides: you'll never get the coconut to go around the hole. I don't care that the author did it- she's amazing and I'm not. I'm fine with that. Really!


She recommended Werthers Chewy Caramels. I didn't know there was such a thing...but nevertheless, there was. And it was on sale, 2/$3.



So you unwrap those babies, microwave for 3 or 4 minutes with a few splashes of milk and some salt, and mix with some nicely toasted coconut (20 minutes at 300 degrees, and stir it around a few times.)

Spoon the gooey coconut and caramel onto the cookies, dredge the bottoms in chocolate (I used almond bark...it was half off after the holidays!) and use the rest of the melted almond bark to drizzle over the top. The easiest way to dunk these, I found, was melt the chocolate and pour a little at a time onto a salad plate. It was easy to swirl the cookie bottoms around without burning my fingers on a vat of molten chocolate. Although, that would be a delicious way to be burned.

You can visit her fabulously written post for a more complete recipe (I'd hate to steal her thunder) but that's it in nutshell. Yes, these take a while- it's not a "dump-mix-bake" recipe. But, they are VERY worth it. And rather economical, when you consider the girls in green vests are hawking roughly 20 cookies for $4, and this recipe makes at least 4 dozen. I made my logs small (these MUST be consumed in one bite, so small is definitely better) and I think I got about 70 cookies.

Next time, I'll make the cookie dough the night before and refrigerate. The next day, I'll just need to slice and bake, cook the coconut while they're cooling, and proceed to assemble the cookies.

Now will someone please give me a reason to make her Thin Mints? Wonder Daddy took all our cookies to the office....*sob* Something about New Year's resolutions...phooey.