Samoas!

Earlier this week, I posted a picture of some Samoas I had made on facebook. A few people messaged me asking for the recipe, so I thought I'd put up some (terrible) photos and do a tutorial of sorts.

When I was looking for Samoa recipes, I noticed that a lot of bloggers make it WAY too complicated. I didn't want to cut out dainty circles, I didn't want to dip each individual bar in chocolate (read: huge mess), and I didn't want to have coconut-caramel goop on top of my cookie. In short, I was going to have to make up my own recipe. 

I used a basic shortbread recipe that I found over at Baking Bites.

3/4 C Butter

1/2 C Sugar

1 Egg

1/2 tsp Vanilla

1/4 tsp Salt

2 C Flour

Cream together butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Sprinkle in salt and then slowly add in the 2 C of flour. Note that you may need more or less flour depending on where you live. Mix it all together until it looks like this:

(you'll have to pretend that I'm a better photographer)

Press the dough into a dark 9x13 pan.  Pop into a preheated 350 degree oven for about 17 minutes.

While the bars are in the oven, it's time to toast some coconut. Use about three cups of shredded, sweetened, real coconut. (no imitation crap) Put a heavy-bottomed frying pan on the stove over medium heat and drop in the coconut. I took two huge wooden spoons to move the coconut around to avoid burning. It takes about as long to toast the coconut as it does to bake the cookies. The coconut will slowly change color, but you want it to all be browned. This is one of those times where you want to keep stirring. Remove the pan from the heat and keep stirring until your timer goes off for the bars. 

Pull the pan out when the edges are just browned and the dough is set. Then, when the bars are still piping hot, dump some chocolate chips on top until they melt. (yes, I know I should have measured them, but I didn't)

Let the chocolate chips sit there for a few minutes while they melt. Then, take a spoon and smooth out the chocolate.

Keep smoothing until it looks like this:

(did I mention that I'm not a photographer?)

Next, you have two choices. 1. Buy or make your own batch of caramel sauce, or 2. If you know my mother, harass her for her caramel sauce recipe. Pick your version and dump about 1 1/2 cups on top...or however much it takes to cover the chocolate. Quickly add your freshly toasted coconut and place in the fridge.

After about an hour (15-minutes if you're hungry) take the pan out of the fridge and cut into bars. Put a cup and a half of chocolate chips in a sandwich bag and pop them into the microwave for 30 seconds at a time until they're melted. Cut off the corner and pipe the chocolate onto your freshly cut bars.

Put them back into the fridge until the chocolate and caramel are set and then enjoy!