Samoa Cookies

Samoa Cookies, a delicious no bake copycat with only 5 ingredients, sweet and chewy and full of fiber, iron and potassium, supporting hair, skin, nails and providing energy.

Samoa cookies are melt-in-your-mouth wonders, with a buttery shortbread base, melted chocolate and fresh coconut. They are easy to make, use only a few ingredients and are full of healthy benefits. If you like healthy homemade versions of popular cookies like my milano cookies and my thin mint cookies, than you'll love these Samoas! I make them in a mini donut pan mold but you can also make them without the hole in a cupcake pan.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Samoa Cookie?
• Main Ingredients
• How to Make
• Recipe Tips
• FAQS
• Other Healthy Chocolate Treats
• Samoa Cookies

What Is a Samoa Cookie?

A Samoa cookie is a round, buttery shortbread base topped with a creamy caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and dipped and drizzled with dark chocolate. The cookie was made famous in 1970s by the Girl Scouts, a youth girls organization, when they included the cookie during their annual food drive.

Main Ingredients

Dates: Full of iron and fiber, as well as add sweet flavor and binding. I used Medjool, but you can use the kind you can find. Look in your grocer's produce area for packaged dates, not dried.

Maple Syrup: A sweetener with a healthier panel than sugar so we can use less brown sugar.

Nut Butter or sunflower seed butter: This ingredient is important as a binder and instead of processed oil. I have made these with nut butter as well as Sunbutter, an excellent sunflower seed butter if you want to make these cookies nut-free.

Shredded coconut: Use shredded coconut that is unsweetened and as fresh as you can buy it.

Chocolate: I use chocolate chips but you can also chop chocolate. I use Enjoylife chips for their clean ingredient panel, or HU gems if you don't want cane sugar in your chocolate.

How to Make

Step 1: Bake the shredded coconut for 5 minutes until brown. Drop the dates in just boiled water for 3 minutes to soften enough to pit them.

Step 2: Make the cookies by processing the browned shredded coconut and dates into a sticky mixture. I used a food processor but a blender will also work.

Step 3: Press the mixture into a mold or the bottom of a cupcake pan. Chill while you make the caramel center.

Step 4: Put the nut butter and maple syrup in a pyrex measuring cup and microwave for 15 seconds, stir until smooth. Pour on chilled cookies.

Step 5: Sprinkle more browned coconut on cookies and drizzle with chocolate.

Step 6: Store Cookies in a sealed container at room temperature for 4 days or freeze for three months.

Recipe Tips

Tip #1: Make sure the dates are fresh and soft. I buy them packaged in the produce section of the grocery store, and always check the date (haha). But at home, before use, I boil them for about 5 minutes to soften them up, then pit.

Tip #2: Make sure the shredded coconut is fresh and from a reputable company. If it's not fresh, the taste will reflect a stale quality. Bob's Red Mill and Let's Do Organic are always fresh in my experience.

Tip #3: To produce a flat chocolate base on the cookie, dip and place the cookie immediately on wax paper. Parchment paper might work but I find wax works better. Once the chocolate is set, peel the cookie off the paper.

FAQS

How Healthy Are Homemade Samoa Cookies

Samoa cookies are relatively healthy as cookies go with 2 grams of protein and fiber each, and only 4 grams of sugar. The sweet flavor and texture of the cookie comes primarily from fresh dates which have a highly nutritious composition, including potassium and iron, and antioxidants which fight off disease. [source]

The other prominent ingredient in samoa cookies is shredded coconut. The shredded nature helps the cookie bind the dates into the soft chewy texture found identical to the processed commercial version. And raw coconut brings an extraordinarily nutritious profile to the cookie, including cholesterol control, weight loss support, digestion help and blood sugar stablization. [source]

Girl Scout Cookie Changes Name

A little fun trivia for you. The Girl Scout's made this Samoa cookie famous, but recently had to change the name to Caramel Delites because the Girl Scouts switched manufacturers, and the original manufacturer of Samoa cookies had a federal trademark on the name.

Other Healthy Chocolate Treats

Avocado Chocolate Tart

Chocolate Brownie Protein Bars

Rocky Road Fudge

Swiss Roll Cake

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