Can I have Samoa?

(Part II in my Girl Scout cookie series)

The Tagalongs/Peanut Butter Patties were a big hit at work...so I set my sights on the next troop: Samoas.

The recipe I started with was pretty true to form -- buttery, crumbly cookie, caramel, coconut, and chocolate. Seems pretty benign, right? But the process sounded much simpler than it was. Three of the weakest parts of my baking game:
1) Rolling out cookie dough (before you scoff, read on)
2) Tempering chocolate (the recipe claims you can just "melt" it)
3) Making caramel (I bought my first candy thermometer just this winter...the recipe didn't call for homemade caramel, but I figured I'd try it)

Challenge 1: Rolling out cookie dough.
The cookie dough was just as you might remember coming home in tubs from the baseball team: sweet, sticky, and a little grainy, where the brown sugar crystals gave the butter something to hold onto. Dip a spoon, finger, or--lets face it--ice cream scoop into the tub to retrieve a tasty reward. Now try rolling it out on a counter top. Cutting out a large circle, then a smaller circle. Then lifting the cut-out donut onto a baking sheet. Then baking it. You would run into the following issues at each stage:

Now try rolling it out on a counter top (not a chance, it's room-temperature butter, holding some sugar together -- it'll stick to the counter, the rolling pin, and anything else it touches). Cutting out a large circle, then a smaller circle (if you even get a cookie cutter to lift away from the counter cleanly, there's no way you'll get the smaller circle lifted out). Then lifting the cut-out donut onto a baking sheet (combine issues 1 and 2, and you'll get the idea). Then baking it (what should be a cookie with a hole in the center more closely resembles a puddle with a belly button).

Not so easily defeated, I employed a few simple weapons: parchment paper, a freezer, and a lot of patience. When you roll out the dough, simply squish the dough between two sheets of parchment with a rolling pin to desired thickness, and put it in the freezer for 10 minutes. Take your frozen dough sheet out (it will start to defrost again immediately), cut large and small circles (but don't try to remove them), and place the sheet back in the freezer for 10 minutes. Take the dough back out, pop the circles out and put the donuts on a baking sheet. Then pop the sheet back in the freezer for five minutes before attempting to bake. Fold dough scraps in on themselves (just using the parchment to squish it together), and repeat. Though time consuming, this process absolutely works.

Challenge 2: Tempering chocolate.
So I must confess, I've never properly tempered chocolate. The true process is pretty involved, and it involves a similar process to tempering steel, with the ultimate goal of rearranging the crystal structure to make a shiny, hard chocolate shell. If you don't temper your chocolate, you'll be much more subject to a soft, fingerprint-covered, melts-at-room-temperature chocolate blob. Our friends at Ghirardelli teach us how, but the lazy man's way involves rearranging how you assemble the cookie: a classic Caramel deLite involves a layer of chocolate on the bottom of the cookie, topped with caramel-covered coconut, striped with chocolate on top. You can only imagine trying to pick up such a cookie with un-tempered chocolate on the top and bottom. Instead, I glazed the top of each cookie with chocolate, which also helped keep the coconut from falling off the cookie (see below).

Challenge 3: Making caramel.
So the process itself is pretty simple: just melt some sweet and tasty stuff together and let it boil until it reaches a certain temperature. I was a little impatient and didn't let the candy reach exactly 250*F (more like 245*F). This may have affected my sugar crystals to the point where they were still a bit grainy. No matter, still tasty. But the trouble came when I tried to spoon a "ring" of caramel-covered toasted coconut flakes onto a butter cookie. not only did the candy solidify too fast to move, but there was so much butter in both the cookie and the caramel that the coconut just wouldn't stick. When I tried applying firmer pressure, my delicate, painstakingly baked butter cookie crumbled. After a little swearing and a lot of broken cookies, I decided to rearrange my decoration structure (see above). For the real perfectionists among us, use a pastry tip to retain the hole in the middle of the cookie, and build the caramel-y-coconut around it.

Valuable lessons learned...I'll know better next time.

~

Homemade Samoas (a.k.a., Caramel deLites)
Cookies: 1 c (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 c light brown sugar, packed
2 c all purpose flour
1/4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t vanilla
1 T milk or cream

Topping: 14 oz caramel (recipe below)
1/2 t salt
3 c shredded, sweetened coconut, toasted
16 oz semisweet or dark chocolate

Caramel: (makes a lot...about 2-3x what you need, but it's troublesome, so make a batch and use the rest for something else)
2 c white sugar
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c corn syrup
1 c evaporated milk
1 pt heavy whipping cream
1 c butter
1 1/4 t vanilla extract

Beat butter and sugars together with a mixer until light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add flour mixture in two parts. Stir in vanilla and cream, until well combined. Follow dough-rolling instructions above, and bake at 350*F for 10-12 minutes, until golden around the edges. Let cool.

Meanwhile, make caramel: bring to a boil all ingredients except vanilla. Monitor the heat of the mixture with a candy thermometer while stirring. When the thermometer reaches 250*F, remove the pot from the heat and let cool slightly. Mix in coconut.

Dip cookies (the top side) in chocolate and place on a wire rack to allow excess chocolate to drip. Pile coconut on top. Using a pastry bag and small round tip (or, in my case, a Ziploc bag with a tiny corner snipped off), pipe stripes across the top of the cookie. Allow chocolate to set, and enjoy.