How to Make Samoa Cookies

Hey guys, it is Audrey Cleo with executive pastry chef from the Belvedeer at the Peninsula Hotel, Stephanie Boswell, who will be doing a delicious demo for us today. I am so excited. This looks vaguely, vaguely familiar too. Yes. Yes. Are we girl scout cookies?

We are. Oh, perfect. A little bit dangerous. So we don't have to sell them or anything. No, no. You can keep them all for yourself. It's a very, very quick thing. So the base of the cookie is basically a sugar cookie. So if you have a recipe you love, use that.

Basic doesn't have to be bad. That is like the biggest bowl of butter I have is this just like

This is like actually the smallest bowl of butter I've ever seen, weirdly enough. So just like any sugar cookie, we're gonna go ahead and add the butter. Add your sugar. And you're gonna cream that together.

Okay. And I'm gonna reach around.

Oh, yeah, please. I don't handle heavy machinery very often. So. So we just cream that together. Okay. And I'm gonna go ahead and dial it up to 10 cuz

Wow. We're moving. That's aggressive.

We're moving. Yeah. So we're gonna let that get really nice and white and fluffy. Oh. All right. So that's about good. Okay. So then we're gonna leave that mixing. All right. Crack an egg in there.

And you didn't get any of the shell in there. Just No. for the record.

And then we're gonna put a little bit of milk in. We're gonna put a little bit of almond extract in.

Ooh, my favorite.

Now, some people are gonna wanna go towards vanilla extract. Totally fine. I prefer almond extract because it's it kind of combines with that chocolate and that coconut and it gives you sort of an almond joy feel. You can smell it actually. It's really nice. We're gonna turn that back down. And you're just gonna dump some flour in there. This whole recipe I will give to you.

Oh, yes. So I can have someone else do it for me. Exactly. At home.

Yeah. Then you just mix in your flour, a little bit of salt, because anything with coconut and or nuts, likes salt. Oh, well. want to put salt in there. So then you just keep letting that go until it makes like just your regular sugar cookie kind of mass in the base, right? So at that point, you're gonna take your dough, roll it between two pieces of parchment paper. Okay. Then stick it in the cooler, let that set up until it's firm. Peel the top parchment off, throw it in the oven. Bake it, 325, 350-ish. And then pull it out when it's golden brown the entire way through. Okay. At that point, then you want to punch your holes.

Fresh from the oven, you just start punching.

Exactly. So that way you get really sharp circles. Yeah. Now, with these, what I've done is made little heart shapes on the inside.

Adorable.

because I'm cheesy. No, can I pick can I pick one up? Of course. They're delicate on the top, but

Beautiful. Oh, look at that. Smelt ink. Smelt ink. It melts in my hands.

So then to make the coconut topping, you want to take coconut and caramel. I've seen people at home do this with like store-bought caramels that they just end up heating up on their stove. Okay. until they melt. A lot of different stuff. Or you can just make your own if you're feeling particularly adventurous. And you want to mix those together. Yeah.

What is like your must-have ingredient?

Salt.

Interesting.

Absolutely salt.

Yeah? And why is that?

Makes sugar taste better. You know? Nobody wants to eat a bowl of sugar. It's just not it's not it's a little bit non. Exactly. You know? So you want to mix these together. Okay. Until it's nice and kind of homogeneous. I use a little bit of flake coconut that doesn't have sugar on it and a little bit of um, the sweetened shredded coconut. Okay. It's not too clo. So you mix that together until it's nice and beautiful and all put together. Then you make a little ring around the outside. So, you want to dip the whole thing in some chocolate.

Ooh.

And then this is the fun part. Yes. Fun/messy. But mostly fun. So the fun part is take some of the chocolate and we're gonna just drizzle it. So this is chocolate that you melted. Um, what kind of chocolate is it?

This is 62% chocolate, but you can use anything you can use Hershey bars. You can use you know, like kind of the colored chocolate. That would be really fun. And then you can top it however you want too. So you can top it with, you know, additional almonds, you can top it with sprinkles, you can top it with whatever you like. In this case, what I've done for dessert goals is taken that punched out center, decorated that separately with colored chocolate.

Beautiful.

With some glitter. Because it's one of the four major food groups. Then of course, we can take our gold leaf.

Ooh. So this is And it's edible.

It is. It's very light. You can. Oh, yeah. Or I can destroy it. No, that's how it works. I'm dangerous. I'm dangerous. I guess I have to eat it now. Of course. So you can get these at the peninsula at the club bar right now. They are on the menu. Oh. Hard work. Mmm. Girl Scouts got anything on me? I mean, they better watch out. That was good. I would buy it by the box full. Thank you so much.

You're so welcome.