Introduction and Samoas

2011-03-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

I love to cook and bake! I spend a lot of time perusing the web and come across a lot of great looking recipes and bookmark them. The problem is, I never go back and make them. So I figured blogging would be a great way to encourage myself to try these recipes. It will also help me keep track of items I like, dislike, or changes I have made.

Anytime I make a recipe for the first time, I will try to follow it exactly, taking into consideration our family and their needs/preferences. For example, due to the children, I will tone down a spicy recipe. If the recipe is decent or I think I can improve on it, I will try it again and notate the differences.

Today I was checking out once a month cooking sites and kept linking around and came to these....

http://bakingbites.com/2009/02/homemade-girl-scout-cookies-samoas-bars/

They look absolutely delicious and are my favorite Girl Scout cookies. The site has another recipe for actual cookies, but it seems very labor intensive. I currently have a pan waiting to go into the oven.

The base of the cookie came out nicely and tastes like shortbread. When I purchased the ingredients for this, I only bought 1 bag of caramels that was 5.5 ounces. I did not realize this was only half of what the recipe required, but I did not feel like running to the store again to get more caramels. The coconut needed turning more frequently than the 5 minutes stated in the recipe. Every 3 minutes was more accurate. (For my oven anyway) It was fairly easy to melt the caramels. I expected them to burn fairly easy or not be easy to stir, but that was not the case. It was a little difficult to spread the caramel and coconut mixture. I used an angled frosting spatula and a silicone pan scraper and would wipe them off on each other when the mixture stuck to one or the other. I melted chocolate and just piped it over the top of the cookie out of a sandwich bag with the tip cut off. I tried to melt my chocolate in a bowl in the microwave but was unhappy with the results. It is the first time I have done it this way and it seemed to go past the melted stage and turn flaky. I mixed in some milk and got a workable consistancy, but next time I will definitely melt it in a bowl over a pot of hot water. That is the method that has worked best for me in the past. The cookies were overall good. I did not get enough of the caramel taste, but that is my own fault for not having bought enough caramel. The shortbread seemed a bit much for the cookie, whether that is due to lack of sufficient caramel is unknown. I will definitely make these again, but I will make the shortbread layer thinner and use the required amount of caramel.

Cooking with Christine

Introduction and Samoas