Monday, August 24, 2009

Not Quite Samoas Bars - Baking Homemade Girl Scout Cookies



I found a recipe, thanks to the Scribbits blog, for Samoas, my favorite Girl Scout cookie, done in bar form (click here, to view the recipe at Baking Bites). The idea of baking them in bar form, is to make it a quicker, more simple process. I'm all for quick and simple, so I decided to make up a batch for snack time.

It turns out that some people's idea of simple, is slightly more complicated than others. These might be less labor intensive than their cookie cousins, but that doesn't mean their labor free. The bars are a shortbread crust, covered with a melted caramel, and toasted coconut topping, cut, dipped, and drizzled with chocolate.

We tried skipping the dipping step, by layering the bottom of our baking pan with chocolate chips. We didn't really think it work, but as my husband noted, the worst we could end up with would be a shortbready glop, covered in caramel, coconut, and chocolate, that would be a mess to look at, but still delicious to to eat. And, while it didn't exactly work, we did still end up with bars, rather than glop. So, it wasn't exactly a failure either. The chocolate chips, instead of melting to cover the bottom of the pan, kept their shape, giving the bottom of the shortbread, a chocolate chip like appearance.


But, as my husband predicted, the bars turned out quite delicious. However, they taste almost nothing like Girl Scout Samoas. In fairness though, it's been several years, at least it's seemed like several years, since I've been willing to pay, in cash or calories, for a box of Samoas. Of course, now when the Girl Scouts come knocking, I might just have to buy one, or two - for the purpose of an accurate scientific comparison.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

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