samoas from scratch

last weekend mike's goddaughter asked him to buy girl scout cookies, and it got me thinking about how much i love samoas! so, for the super bowl, i decided to try them from scratch.  if i do say so myself, they turned out great!  i brought some to my family and coworkers and they loved them too.  it took a bit of work, but they are definitely adaptable to take less time (i.e. not cutting holes in the middle of each cookie or individually dipping/ drizzling each cookie in chocolate), so if you have a couple of hours to spare some weekend, i would try these cookies!

ingredients:

for the cookies:

- 2 sticks of butter at room temperature

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 2 cups flour

- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 2 tablespoons milk

for the topping:

- 3 cups sweetened coconut

- 15 ounces soft caramels (i bought the ones individually wrapped... whoops! haha)

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

- 3 tablespoons milk

- 8 ounces of semi sweet chocolate

directions:

for the cookies:

- using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar

- in a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt

- slowly add this dry mix to the butter mixture

- slowly add the vanilla and milk 

- cover dough and refrigerate until dough is as firm as a stick of butter

- roll out the dough, on a well-floured surface, to desired thickness (i made it thin for this recipe)

- cut your shapes out of the dough

- place the shapes on a greased cookie sheet

-bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees

for the topping:

- toast the caramel in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes **making sure to take it out every minute and a half or 2 minutes to stir so it does not burn

- microwave caramels, salt, and milk for topping in 1 minute increments until melted

- stir the toasted and cooled coconut into the caramel mixture

- **after the cookies have cooled spread the coconut/caramel mixture onto cookies (the only thing i found to work was spreading the mixture by hand and dipping my hands in water in between every cookie so it wouldn't stick to me)

- once the caramel/ coconut is cooled on the cookies, dip the bottom of the cookies into melted semi-sweet chocolate (i used a fork to evenly spread the chocolate and remove the excess)

- pipe melted chocolate on top of the cookies for decoration

before

after

mike bent a bbq skewer for me to use for the inner circle 

messy - but it worked well! 

it does make a lot!