It’s Girl Scout Cookie season! I was WAY too tempted to buy some boxes the other day.. I was a Girl Scout for 6 years as a kid, so I love supporting them, but I just can’t eat girl scout cookies anymore with my new diet restrictions.
I was SO shocked how delicious and close to the original they came out! I didn’t have super high hopes for the caramel.. just an idea in my head and went for it and I am SO glad I did. The secret to making it taste more like caramel is butter, vanilla, and salt. You can definitely substitute coconut oil for butter if you’d like a vegan version of these.
Healthy Samoa Cookies
A delicious, decadent, yet healthier version of a favorite girl scout cookie loved by many! These cookies have no refined sugars and feature a DELICIOUS date-caramel!
Ingredients
For the Shortbread
- ½ cup salted butter or one standard stick
- ⅓ cup coconut sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup gluten-free flour blend WITH xanthan gum or regular flour
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp milk or more if needed
For the Date-Caramel / Coconut-Chocolate Topping
- 1 ½ cup pitted dates soaked in hot water for 30 minutes
- ⅓ cup butter or coconut oil melted
- ½ tsp vanilla
- ½ cup toasted coconut flakes
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips melted
Instructions
Date-Caramel
- Preheat to the oven 350° and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add pitted dates to a bowl and add hot water. Soak for 30 minutes. While dates are soaking, make cookies.
- In a large food processor, add dates, vanilla, and melted butter or coconut oil slowly drizzled until smooth. If necessary, add a bit of the warm soaking water 1 tsp at a time until everything is super smooth.
- Scrape down sides to assure all parts of caramel are smooth.
For the Shortbread Cookies
- In a bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment OR an electric mixer, cream softened butter or coconut oil, vanilla, and coconut sugar until light and fluffy.
- In a separate bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder.
- Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until crumbly, then add milk and keep mixing until mixture forms a dough ball.
- Roll out dough right away to ⅛" thick. (do not refrigerate). If you do decide to keep it in the fridge, be sure to warm up to room temperature BEFORE rolling. The dough will crumble when you roll it if you put it in the fridge.
- Use a cookie cutter to cut out cookies. You can use a smaller cookie inside the larger if you'd like it to look like a classic samoa!
- Bake cookies for 10-15 minutes, or until light golden brown.
- Remove from oven and let cool entirely before removing from the pan.
- Dip each bottom of the cookie in melted chocolate. Keep the cookies bottom-side up, then set in fridge until chocolate is hard.
- Once cookies are firmed in fridge, remove them from fridge and coat each top part in the date caramel, top with the toasted coconut, then drizzle extra chocolate on top. Set in fridge again. Cookies set up best over night.
Did you try this? Please snap a photo for me!Tag @thewholesomefoodie or tag #thewholesomefoodie on instagram!
