Healthy Girl Scout Cookies - Samoa

Everybody in their right mind loves Girl Scout Cookies. They're tasty and adorable little girls sell them to you. Unfortunately they're also full of sugar. Brown sugar, cane sugar, invert sugar.

What if I told you that you could have the cookies without all of the unhealthy ingredients? Well sit down and take a deep breath because you can have the cookies without all of the unhealthy ingredients.

I chose to make these as bars because I was too lazy to make them into cookie form. Nonetheless, they were magically delicious. The rich flavor makes one or two of these bars enough. While it's perfectly fine to eat more because all of the ingredients are healthy, you can make these last for quite a while without devouring all at once.

Ingredients:

Base:

1. Walnuts - 2 cups
2. Unsweetened coconut - 1 cup
3. Raw honey - 1/4 cup
4. Vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon (but a little more never hurt anybody)
5. Sea salt - 2 pinches

Coconut Caramel:

1. Dates - 1 1/2 cups (soaked)
2. Canned coconut milk - 1/2 cup
3. Vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon
4. Sea salt - 1 pinch
5. Unsweetened coconut shreds - 1 1/2 cups

Chocolate:

1. Dark chocolate - melted
2. Unsweetened coconut shreds - 1/8 cup

Instructions:

Base:

1. Place the walnuts and the coconut in your food processor and blend until you have a crumby mixture.

2. Add the raw honey, vanilla extract and sea salt and blend until well combined. A nice dough should be formed.

3. Press the dough into pan. Parchment paper is recommended but not required. I was out of parchment paper so I didn't bother but it helps when serving.


Coconut Caramel:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and toast the unsweetened coconut shreds for 8 minutes. Then remove and let cool while you complete the next step.

2. In your food processor, blend dates until a soft dough is formed.

3. Add the canned coconut milk, vanilla extract and sea salt. Blend until well combined.

4. Pour in the unsweetened coconut shreds and pulse until just combined. Optionally you could hand stir for a more textured consistency.

5. Spread caramel on top of the base. Store in freezer for 15-20 minutes. After freezing, the caramel will be firm but still soft.


Dark chocolate:

1. Melt dark chocolate in a small bowl in 20 second intervals.

2. Dip base of the bars into the chocolate and place them base-side-up on a cookie sheet.

3. Refreeze for 7-10 minutes, until the chocolate is hardened.

3. Flip the bars over and drizzle remaining melted chocolate onto the caramel coating. You may need to remelt the chocolate. To drizzle, I used a spoon but you could alternatively pour the chocolate into a plastic bag, cut the corner and squeeze onto the caramel.

4. Add a pinch of coconut to the top of each bar. Sing songs of joy. The Samoa bars are complete.