The great flavors of the famous Samoa girl scout cookie, in truffle form! A buttery shortbread truffle covered with caramel, toasted coconut and a chocolate’y drizzle. Only six ingredients!
Girl Scout Cookie season always makes me feel a little nostalgic. It brings me right back to the early 90’s, when right after Christmas was over, you knew that it was almost time – COOKIE time. You’d get that obnoxiously sized card stock order form that always tore down the middle, with a different color box for each type of cookie, and every time someone signed up, you’d proudly mark the number of boxes they wanted in their flavor choice, hoping that you’d get all those boxes full and be the winner of life {or the most amount of cookies sold} in your troop.
But times have changed. I feel like Girl Scout cookies are on sale like, all year long. And they’re like $5 a box. And there’s less of them. And people sell them on Facebook. I MISS MY COLOR CODED CARD STOCK ORDER FORM!
But as the girl scout cookie pushing times have changed, so have I. I like my GS cookies in a little more ‘adult’ fashion. Samoas (or ‘Caramel Delights’ as they’re politically correctly referred to now) were always my favorite. So I brought them back in the form of one of my most favorite desserts on earth – the illustrious truffle. These are beyond easy and beyond amazing guys, especially if you’re of the samoa fan fam. SIX ingredients. That is all it takes to bring you back to childhood! No time machine necessary!
- 1 regular sized (11.2oz) box of Keebler Shortbread Sandies (any shortbread cookie will do – you want to have 2 cups of shortbread crumbs in total)
- 6oz (3/4 of a block) cream cheese, softened to room temp
- 30 caramels (or you could just save yourself the extreme aggravation of unwrapping 30 squares and buy yourself a bag of the caramel bits, sold in the same aisle as the chocolate chips – my present day self wishes I had done that)
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- 2 cups coconut*
- 4oz milk chocolate (or dark if you prefer dark)
- In a food processor (or with a rolling pin in a large ziplock bag), process your shortbread cookies until they become crumbs. Add the cream cheese to the food processor (or the ziplock bag) and process until dough forms (you could form the dough in the plastic bag too just using your hands).
- Take 2-3 tablespoons of the shortbread dough and roll into a ball. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze until solid (the more frozen they are, the better they’ll hold up with the caramel)
- When you’re ready to dip your truffles, take the 2 cups* of coconut and lightly toast by heating the flakes in a medium sized skillet over medium heat, stirrfing frequently, until the flakes just start to brown (you don’t want them to brown completely, just so there’s a bit of brown mixed in with the white). Set flakes aside.
- In a saucepan, heat your ¼ cup of heavy cream, and then add your caramels, stirring frequently until the caramel is melted and has completely combined with the cream. Mix in your toasted coconut.
- With a large spoon, roll your shortbread balls in the caramel/coconut mixture until fully covered, and then place back on the parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat until all balls have been covered (if towards the end your mixture gets a little too thick, just add a splash more of cream to thin it out a bit).
- Melt your chocolate in the microwave in 15 second increments until fully melted, and then finish the truffles off with a drizzle of chocolate, Keep chilled until ready to serve.
- 2 cups of coconut will make the coating pretty thick with coconut – if you prefer a little more caramel and a little less coconut, cut the amount of coconut to 1.5 cups vs. 2.