No need to wait for Girl Scout cookie season. Enjoy your favorite samoa cookies all year long with this homemade version of the popular cookies!
Check out the Girl Scouts official website to find out when these famous cookies are for sale in your neighborhood. However, if you need your cookie fix now… continue to read how to make these delicious cookies at home!
Homemade Girl Scout Cookies
These cookies taste like summer vacation. Eating these make me feel like I’m lounging on some tropical beach.
The sweet coconut, rich caramel, and decadent chocolate atop a buttery shortbread cookie equals pure deliciousness.
Here’s another homemade version of a classic. These thin mints are crunchy chocolate cookies enrobed in peppermint chocolate.
Samoa Cookies Components
- Shortbread Dough
- Coconut Caramel Topping
- Dipping Chocolate
Shortbread Dough
Use a stand mixer or electric hand mixer to beat together the shortbread cookie dough. Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes, or quicken the process by freezing for 15 minutes.
The dough uses very few ingredients. Much of its flavor comes from the butter and vanilla. As such, use fresh, high-quality butter.
At all costs, do not use imitation vanilla extract. I suggest using vanilla paste, but high quality pure vanilla extract works just as well.
Roll dough to about 1/4-inch thick. Cut out circles using a floured 2 1/2-inch cutter. Then, punch out an inner circle with a smaller sized cutter of your choice.
Carefully transfer shortbread cookie rings onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes until lightly brown.
Coconut Caramel Topping
The coconut caramel topping is a very simple to make.
Fold together toasted sweetened coconut with an easy caramel sauce. The caramel sauce is a mixture of sugar, butter, and cream.
It is important to toast the shredded coconut. Toasting enhances the depth of coconut flavor.
Dipping Chocolate
I suggest using dark chocolate. The slight bitterness of dark chocolate helps to cut through the sweetness of the coconut caramel topping.
You may use chopped chocolate bars, chocolate chunks, or chocolate chips.
To keep the chocolate in temper, gently melt the chocolate in the microwave at half power, or over a simmering double boiler.
Be careful not to overheat the chocolate! Overheated chocolate will be taken out of temper. This will result in cloudy, grainy looking chocolate as it dries.
For ease, use a small piping bag to drizzle chocolate over the assembled cookies.
Final Notes
Yes, these samoa cookies are a bit time consuming. The cookies are comprised of several elements.
However, I assure you that these cookies are not difficult to make. It merely requires a bit of preparation and patience.
Related Recipes
- A tropical take on banana cream tart, this coconut cream tart is layered with coconut caramel, coconut pastry cream, and toasted shredded coconut.
- Coconut walnut baklava is a variation featuring shredded coconut, toasted walnuts, and orange honey syrup.
- This chocolate caramel coconut cake is comprised of two coconut cake layers with a shredded coconut caramel filling. The cake is finished with both chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache.
Homemade Samoa Cookies
Ingredients
Shortbread Cookie Dough:
- 1 cup unsalted butter, , room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla paste, or pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 ½ Tablespoons whole milk
Caramel:
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cup heavy cream
- pinch kosher salt
- 3 cups sweetened dried shredded coconut, , toasted
Dipping Chocolate:
- 10 oz dark chocolate, , chopped
Instructions
Shortbread Cookie Dough:
- Cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla paste in the bowl of a stand mixer.
- In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- All flour mixture to butter mixture. Add milk and mix until dough has formed. Divide the dough into two disks. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or freeze for 15 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Prepare parchment lined sheet trays.
- Roll out chilled dough to ¼-inch thick. Cut out circles using a floured 2 ½ inch cutter. Punch out an inner with a smaller cutter of your choice. Lay the cookie cutouts on the parchment lined sheet trays and bake for 12-15 minutes until firm and lightly golden. Let rest on sheet tray until cool to the touch and then transfer to cooling racks.
Caramel:
- Preheat oven to 325° F. Line sheet tray with parchment paper.
- Spread coconut into a thin and even layer on prepared sheet tray. Bake for 10 minutes. Rotate pan and stir coconut. Continue to bake at 5 minute intervals, rotating the pan and stirring the coconut until golden in color. Once toasted, let cool to room temperature.
- In a medium sauce pan, add sugar. Cook over medium high heat until sugar begins to melt. Once sugar begins in liquefy, reduce heat to medium or medium-low. Do not over agitate the sugar, but swirl the pan once in a while to make sure sugar melts evenly. Continue to melt the sugar until liquid is amber brown and aromatic.
- Add butter to sauce pan. Whisk until all the butter has melted.
- Remove sauce pan from heat and slowly add the heavy cream. Continue to whisk until cream and sugar mixture are homogeneous. Be careful, once you add the cream, the sugar mixture will bubble and rise quite a bit. Be sure the sauce pan is away from heat before you add the cream.
- Continue to whisk until caramel is thick and smooth. Let cool until slightly warm to the touch. Reserve about ⅓ cup of the caramel in a separate bowl. Then add the salt and toasted coconut. Fold into the coconut until thoroughly distributed.
Dipping Chocolate:
- Slowly melt chocolate in the microwave. Place chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and heat for 45 seconds on full power. Stir chocolate and continue to heat at 30 second intervals at half power until chocolate is melted. Make sure not to overheat the chocolate which will bring it out of temper.
Assembly:
- Once shortbread cookies are cool, dip one side into reserved caramel sauce. Then spread about 1 ½ teaspoons of coconut caramel mixture on top of cookie. Dipping the cookie first into the reserved caramel sauce helps the coconut mixture to adhere to the cookie. Let cool on rack.
- Dip the bottoms of the cookies into the melted chocolate. Let cool on rack upside down (coconut mixture side down) until chocolate has hardened and set.
- Once chocolate is set, turn cookie right side up. Transfer remaining dipping chocolate into a small parchment bag or piping bag. Cut a small tip and drizzle chocolate over the tops of the cookies. Let cookies sit out until drizzled chocolate has set and then enjoy!
Notes
- Assembled cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to three days.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this recipe? Rate & comment below!
Thanks for this – I tried these out today, though I did have to substitute desiccated coconut as I live in the UK, and it took two tries to get the caramel right, as I am new to making caramel. My husband and kids all loved them.
Caramel can be a little tricky at first. Glad your cookies turned out great!
These look like the real thing. Actually they look better than the real thing and come to the table with no preservatives. Your recipe will beput to good use. This is my first visit to your blog, so I took sometime to browse through your earlier posts. I’m so glad I did that. I really like the food and recipes you share with your readers and I’ll definitely be back. I hope you have a great day. Blessings…Mary
Thank you so much, Mary! I’m glad you found my site. I look forward to hearing about what recipes you end up trying :) Have a great week!
I can’t wait to try these! Thank you so much!
I’ve found a recipe on marthastewart.com that rivals the thin mint. Also labor intensive, but worth it! I last out the candy canes and used dark chocolate rather than white. I hope you enjoy them!
http://www.marthastewart.com/334691/chocolate-peppermint-cookies
You’re welcome! Thanks for the recipe! I’ll have to try them soon!
Oh, you wicked girl. These are my downfall. And now I know how to make them at home. I’m doomed. Doomed, I say! ;-)
Don’t worry they are my weakness too. Save a couple cookies for yourself and give the rest away. You won’t be doomed. I promise :)
these look delish. I am so happy to be following you because you have so many great ideas. I will have to pin this so I can keep coming back. Thanks for sharing.
You are very welcome! Thank you for following me! I hope you’ll be able to make the cookie sometime :)
You mean, I can make them anytime I want now? Great recipe!
Yes, ANYTIME you want! :)
my gosh, these look amazing! good job!
Thank you! :)
Samoa cookies are my favorite girl scout cookie. Yes, these are very time consuming to make, but OH so worth it at the end. I’m getting dreamy eyed just thinkin’ about ’em…
They are my favorite girl scout cookies, too! OMG, I clicked onto your blog and I am in love with your DIY cinnamon chips!
This is a delicious reminder for the girl scouts. I always try to buy a few boxes every year, but I prefer homemade cookies. I have seen samoa cookie recipes before but I am not sure if I have saved this particular one. It sure does make for one awesome looking cookie. I will save this just to make sure-better a duplicate than not at all. Tempting pictures-thanks for sharing this.
Thanks! I prefer homemade cookies as well, especially because it doesn’t have all the preservatives some boxed cookies have.
Totally made this recipe. It’s perfect. My husband thanks you.
These have always been my favorite girl scoot cookies…I’m totally trying these!!! :)
Me too! Now you can have them all year round :)