Samosas, Mimosas, Samoas

A great success of a party, culinarily and funkily! Recipe for mimosas is unnecessary (juice+champagne dudes), recipe for samosas is previously posted, and recipe for samoas follow. honestly, i would not recommend making these unless you're interested in a long-term baking/dish-doing adventure (or you're throwing a theme party that hinges on their presence). they were awesome, probably as good as the real thing, but they take a lot of steps and a lot of dishes. so save them for a boring rainy day in girl scout off-season.



Samoas
makes ~30 big and ~50 small cookies

4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Up to 4 tablespoons milk

3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)

12 ounces good-quality chewy caramels, unwrapped

3 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon salt

8 to 12 ounces dark or semisweet chocolate (chocolate chips are fine)


Preheat to 350°

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together the butter and sugar with the vanilla until fluffy. mix in the flour mixture (use your hands if you don't have an egg beater, spoon will not be strong enough). Add a few tablespoons of milk if it's too dry to come together, but don't let it get sticky and wet - you want it as a dry as possible without falling apart.

cut the dough into a few pieces for easier handling. roll each piece out on a piece of parchment or wax paper to about 1/4" thickness. press another piece of wax paper on top and refrigerate for a half hour or so.

Preheat to 350. Take out your rolled dough sheets and cut out circles using the top of a cup or whatever is handy. if you have something the right size to make holes in the middle, go for it (we used the bag of a frosting tip attachment... the cap of a highlighter would also work). gather up the scraps and re-roll it out to make more circles. put the cookies on lined baking sheets - they can be pretty close together cause the refrigeration keeps them from expanding. bake 10-12 minutes, until slightly golden around the edges.

Reduce the oven temperature to 300. Pour out your coconut on two making sheets and toast until lightly browned, stirring as necessary (the edges will probably brown before the middle). Meanwhile, melt your caramels on the stove with the milk, stirring until totally dissolved. when the coconut is ready, mix it in to the caramel. carefully spoon and press the mixture onto your cookies (they are fragile).

melt the chocolate on a double-boiler and dip the base of each cookie in it, then set the cookies on waxed paper or baking parchment. if you have extra chocolate, you can put it in a bag and squeeze it over the cookies to make them pretty (we ran out). refrigerate until the chocolate is completely set and the cookies peel off easily. Enjoy!