Friday, March 20, 2009

Recipe Review: Homemade Girl Scout Cookies: Samoas Bars

Recently, Baking Bites, a fantastic baking blog, has posted a series of recipes for making your own Girl Scout cookies. When I saw a recipe for Samoas bars, I had to give it a whirl. (If you prefer more authentic looking Samoas, there are instructions for that too.)

The recipe was fairly straightforward, and aside from the coconut and caramels did not require anything I wouldn't otherwise have on hand. Unwrapping each individually-wrapped caramel took a long time, and next time I would consider making my own caramel sauce. Toasting the coconut was a snap, and I was able to do it at the same time that the shortbread cookie base was baking.

I liked that the recipe had a number of helpful reminders/tips throughout (stop and stir the chocolate frequently when melting, use parchment paper and a wire cooling rack, a ziplock with a hole in a corner can be used as a pipette, etc.) I think it would have gone more smoothly had I followed the directions more closely and waited for each stage to cool completely, but I was impatient and rushed and the cookies turned out mostly OK (a little crumbly, and not as pretty as the Baking Bites ones, but still delicious.)

I definitely recommend this recipe for Samoas fans and will be making it again. If you've never had a Samoa, but love toasted coconut, caramel, and/or shortbread, I'd give it a whirl.

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