Samoas. Nuff Said.

Oh yes, the famous girl scout cookie, the Samoa has at long last been made and perverted by yours truly. Everybody loves these things, they're like crack. And they're SO easy to make, it's almost a sin. This past Tuesday, I woke up and had the house to myself since Tams was at work. She left me a note asking me to make her something sweet for when she got home. I've been meaning to bake anyway, so I went looking through grouprecipes and finally found this on henrie's page. I already had some coconut in the house, so I said screw it, got the rest of the ingredients from the store and went to town.

They tasted EXACTLY the same as the commercial grade, only better. Yeah, no seriously, these were friggin fantastic and I'm uber-proud of myself for pulling these off.

The secret to this recipe is in roasting the coconut. If you don't, your cookies will be shit. All you have to do is spread about 2 cups worth on a pan and bake it at 350 F until lightly browned, stirring it occasionally. Henrie's recipe says it takes 5-6 minutes, but I'm telling you it may take almost twice as long to get it evenly done.

Another little secret of success is to get the timing of the batter down right. This might prove to be a problem though because you need to babysit this batter hardcore or it will burn. What I did was make the batter first, then I remembered the coconut needed to be browned and freaked out a little. So while the coconut was roasting, this batter became like cement in the pan and I had to keep stirring it. What I would suggest is that you roast the coconut first, then while it's out and cooling (Or maybe left in the oven on the warm setting) then you make the batter. Working with the batter fresh would have been worlds easier. Don't be a schmuck like me.

Okay, so when your batter and your coconut is ready, you marry the two. Mix that shit in well because once it starts cooling, it will be a giant pain in your ass.

Forming the patties on anything other than wax paper will be too hard, so use the wax paper. Trust me on this, okay? Because of how tough the batter was at this point, flattering these out was a task. And no, I didn't put those stupid little holes in the middle. To me that's like eating half a cookie. You can make them any size but this batch yeilded 34 cookies. If you make them smaller, you could possibly get more.

The recipe called for chocolate chips melted down. At first I was going to get a bar to melt, but the chips were on sale. I added a bit of salt, and why not? It tasted good. I don't have a bain-marie (double boiler) so I created a ghetto-style one out of a regular pot and my large mixing bowl. It did the trick. When it was all melted, I made a ghetto-style pastry bag by scooping the still boiling hot chocolate into a ziplock bag and cutting off a small corner. This is a prime example of why you should NEVER put boiling hot melted chocolate into a flimsy plastic ziplock:

Yeah, that was retarded. If you have those white cloth ones, use them. If not, wait for the fucking chocolate to cool down a little bit before you decorate with them. Sheesh, I'm a dillshnick.

I managed to clean them up and salvage them pretty well though, with only two frosting casualties.... neither of which Tammy ever saw. Mwahahaha.

The result was two different styles of frosting, but Tams enjoyed the ones with the thinner frosting better. They looked more dainty, and the thicker chocolate lines were too overwhelming and she couldn't taste the coconut. So the ones with the thick lines were mine, and what I didn't eat, I gave out to friends. She was pleasantly surprised by them when she got home, and said they were better than the boxed ones. It made me happy to see her enjoy them so much. They were even better after the awesome dinner I made, which is the blog coming up next.

For now, I'd like to share this sinfully good and easy recipe with you. And the best part is-- it's gluten free!

Girl Scout Samoa Cookies

Ingredients:
6 Tbspns butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup Karo light corn syrup
1/2 of a 14 ounce can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups toasted coconut
1 cup semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips

Method:
In a 2 quart saucepan over medium-low heat, combine butter, sugar and corn syrup.
Heat to a full boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Slowly pour in Eagle Brand milk, stirring constantly. Continue cooking over low heat until candy thermometer reaches 220-228 degrees.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Beat until creamy. Immediately stir in toasted coconut and mix well.
Spoon by tablespoonfuls into circular mounds onto buttered wax paper. Flatten into disks.
Allow to cool completely.
Melt the chocolate chips and drizzle thinly in stripes over cookies. Let chocolate harden at room temperature. Store in a airtight container in the fridge.
*To toast coconut: Spread coconut on a baking sheet and toast in a preheated 350 degree oven, stirring occasionally until lightly browned, anywhere from 7-10 minutes.