"Samoas" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• If you can't satisfy the craving for Girl Scout cookies, try your hand at Samoa Tartlets.
• Don't be afraid to show off your pot rack, spice rack or canned-food cave.
• Batali brings Eataly, a Turin-based Italian food bazaar, to New York -- brewpub included!
• Don't scribble grocery items as they come to mind -- there's a better way.
• Never mind debating white or red wine -- the most important question is: crunchy or creamy peanut butter?
• Get your oopa on with a Greek drink menu.
• Bag some baby bok choy before winter's end.

We all love Girl Scout cookies, right? I try to stay away from them or I'll a whole box at a time, but I love them all the same. Well so does one scout from Michigan, who actually broke sales records.

Jennifer Sharpe sold, I kid you not, 17, 328 boxes of cookies. That's a lot of Samoa's! I can't imagine selling even a fraction of that. Apparently, though, all that selling really helped Jennifer get over being shy. Not only that, the cookie sales (about $21,000) is paying for her troop to go to Europe this winter.

Just think about that next time you buy a box of Girl Scout cookies!

Source

The Girl Scouts of America have a new cookie baker for some parts of the country and, in a business move stupider than New Coke, have renamed some of their best-sellers (Though, as some of our readers kindly point out , other parts of the country have the "new" names for ages).

In my neck of the woods, Samoas are now "Caramel DeLites," which sounds like the name of a dietetic candy old ladies buy at the Dollar Tree. Tagalongs are now "Peanut Butter Patties, Do-Si-Dohs are "Peanut Butter Sandwiches" and Trefoils are "Shortbread," names which suggest either a wildly subversive anti-consumerist campaign a la No Logo (Declare Independence from Corporate Cookie! We Don't Need No Name-Brand Baked Goods!) or a newly minted Robotic Cookie Namer down at Girl Scout HQ. All-Abouts (which was a weird name, I admit) are now "Thanks-a-Lots." Try saying that un-sarcastically.

In honor of my favorite GS cookie, I created this Samoa Cake - layers of génoise cake brushed with caramel simple syrup and spread them with alternating layers of chocolate caramel ganache frosting and soft salty caramel, then iced with more chocolate caramel ganache blanketed in toasted coconut flakes. It's tall, rich and incredibly sweet, half-cake, half-candy bar. Take that, Caramel DeLite!

Read on for the recipe.

Source

Once a year the Girl Scouts are unleashed on the world and ask us if we want to buy some of their cookies. As if we could even try to exist without their shortbread and minty chocolate wafers.

My favorite has always been the Samoa. Chocolate and caramel and coconut...wow, I used to eat an entire box in one sitting. But then like all addicts I'd want more and want to sell anything I could just to get a few more in my mouth. What can a person do if they love Samoas and they vanish for another year?

Little Debbie to the rescue!

When I was a Junior Girl Scout, the other girls sold box after box of Thin Mints, Do-si-Dos, and even those boring Trefoils, and received backpacks and beach towels and stuffed animals for their efforts.

...I sold twenty boxes and got a lousy iron-on patch.

Okay, so I'll never be an entrepreneur. That's okay. Doesn't mean I can't still enjoy the cookies, like the Samoas in Susan's unbelievably decadent recipe on her Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy blog.

Susan made some adjustments to her Chocolate Mascarpone Cheese Pie and came up with what she calls her Thank Heaven For Little Girl (Scout)s Samoa Cheese Tart, which sounds absolutely divine.

Susan's so nice, she buys cookies from all of the Scouts, but you technically only need one box of the Samoas, plus a few other things...