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Ingredients
- For the topping, you'll need:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
- 115 g (1/2 cup) sugar
- 250 g (2 cups) GF Jules all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 225 g (3 cups) shredded unsweetened coconut, toasted
- 15-oz soft caramels (I recommend making your own if you have the time!)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp milk
- 8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate
Details
Adapted from instructables.com
Preparation
Step 1
Cream together your butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add this to the butter mixture.
Finally, at low speed, add the milk and vanilla.
Separate the dough into halves and wrap in plastic or store in Tupperware. Refrigerate until the dough is as firm as a stick of butter.
While the dough is refrigerating, preheat your oven to 350F (180C).
Toast the shredded coconut on a baking sheet for about 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently. Let cool while shaping and baking cookies.
Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface.
Cut out the shapes with a biscuit cutter, or two differently-size round cutters, or a small round cutter and a straw. You get the idea!
Bake your batches of cookies one sheet at a time for 10-12 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet 180 degrees, halfway through baking. This ensures that all the cookies turn the same color instead of getting browner in the hotter parts of your oven.
Let cookie sheets cool before putting new cookies to be baked on them.
Place your caramels, milk and salt in a microwaveable bowl and nuke for 1 minute at a time, stopping to stir, until nice and melty (3-4minutes)
If you're using homemade caramels, you can reduce the amount of milk and microwave time.
If you are using hard caramels, increase the milk.
Stir the toasted coconut into the caramel mixture.
Using a knife, an offset spatula, or whatever device floats your boat, spread the caramel mixture on top of your cookies. Be generous.
Some of your cookies may not be structurally sound enough to support the force of having caramel and coconut applied to them. My guess is not enough baking time. Do not abandon these cookies, dear friends! Remember, they started out life as delicious shortbread. They can remain in your life as the cookies you secretly eat when no one's watching! Or as your "test" cookies to try out different ratios of toppings! These broken cookies are a blessing.
The only thing missing from these bad boys is a good dose of chocolate!
Lay out a sheet of waxed paper for your cookies to rest on once they're all chocolate-bottomed.
Chop up your chocolate and microwave it in 30-second bursts, stirring between each, until nice and melty.
Dip the bottoms of your cookies into the chocolate and place on waxed paper.
Use the remaining melted chocolate to drizzle over top of the cookies once they're all dipped. A spoon works for this, but a piping bag or the corner snipped off a plastic baggie makes 'em prettier.
That's it! Store in an airtight container for best results.
Tip:
What's that you say? You have leftover caramel and coconut, but ate up too many ran out of cookies? Not a problem!
Use a couple spoons or a dough scoop and make little candies out of them. Bon-bon/truffle type candies of caramelly coconutty deliciousness topped with chocolate. Oh yes.
Waste not. Want more.
Suggestions:
I would suggest filling a ziplock bag with a big enough size opening at the bottom of the bag to pipe the coconut-caramel goodness onto them. Samoas are my favorite Girl Scout Cookie!
Next time I make them, I will probably not make the cutout and work with the whole cookie.
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