Also known as…
Samoas Fudge Babies!
No, not the spicy Indian potato thing. That’s a samosa. This is a samoa. You don’t want to get the two confused! 
Awhile back, I posted a recipe for Raw Thin-Mint Brownies.
In that post, I vowed to someday try making raw samoas, my favorite girl-scout cookies as a child.
Gosh, my children are pretty.
Certainly prettier than those poor Thin Mint Brownies!
Samoas Babies
- Packed 1/2 cup dates (90g)
- 2 tbsp unsweetened shredded coconut (30g)
- 1/16 tsp pure vanilla extract
- scant 1/8 tsp salt
- 1-2 tbsp chocolate chips or bar (14-28g)
Put all the ingredients together in your food processor, and blend. (I like to make 1/2 a batch and use the Magic Bullet short cup.) You can reserve a few of the chocolate chips to add, post-blending, if you so desire. See below for nutrition information.
Nutrition Facts for Samoas Babies:
Serving Size: 45 grams (the size of a Larabar)
- 175 calories
- 8 g fat
- 2 g protein
- 5 g fiber
- 0 g added sugars
When I set out to create a fudge baby version of the famous Samoas girl-scout cookie, the first thing I did was look up ingredients for the real Samoas.
Do you know what I found?
It wasn’t pretty: Sugar, vegetable oil (partially-hydrogenated palm kernel and/or cottonseed oil, soybean and palm oil), enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), coconut, corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk (condensed milk, sugar), cocoa, sorbitol, glycerin, invert sugar, cocoa processed with alkali,cornstarch, salt, caramelized sugar, dextrose, soy lecithin, carrageenan, leavening, natural and artificial flavor
Anyone want to count how many times some form of sugar is listed in there? (Answer: six)
Sounds more like a science experiment than a cookie. Does anyone else find it upsetting that they’re allowed to produce such cookies and feed them—in bulk—to unsuspecting young girls (not to mention the rest of the population that buys the cookies from the scouts). I just don’t understand…
Why do they have to make junk?
Healthy food can taste delicious, as I say in my About Me page.
So why don’t they make a healthier cookie for the girl scouts to sell? Unfortunately, I know the answer: cost. It’s cheaper for companies to mass-produce cookies with chemical-y ingredients and preservatives than it’d be for them to use real, natural ingredients (i.e. ingredients found in cookies that people would bake at home!). Who ends up suffering? The consumers.
Don’t get me wrong…
I’m not saying that eating a girl-scout cookie every now and then is going to hurt you. I truly believe it’s perfectly healthy for people to occasionally eat unhealthy foods (as long as they don’t stress about it afterwards). Stress over achieving a “perfect” diet seems far worse for one’s health than eating processed junk every once in a while. No, what I’m upset about is the fact that manufacturers are allowed to produce said processed junk in the first place! Yes, America is a free country. But does this mean companies have the right to add to their products whatever unhealthy (and, in some cases, dangerous) ingredients they desire? And then they aggressively target these products towards children?! Marketing and deceptive advertising strategies can fool even the most well-intentioned consumers.
Ah, but I digress. Let’s get back to the fun stuff, shall we?
These are actually nut-free!
I improved upon the recipe after the photo-shoot, which is why the babies in the photos have nuts. (Please don’t take that sentence the wrong way.) Do they taste exactly like samoas cookies? No, but that wasn’t the taste/texture I set out to achieve when making these. They’re not raw samoas, they’re raw samoas fudge babies!
So what do they taste like?
Well, imagine a Samoa-flavored Larabar.
And click for a list of all the Homemade Larabar Flavors.
If I had a Vita-Mix I would make a nice big batch of green smoothies for my hubby, my kiddos, and myself. Then I would mix up a batch of the Samoas Fudge Babies……Yummmmm.
yummm. made these tonight too with my ghirardelli sea salt almond dark chocolate. absolutely delicious. thanks for the recipe!
I tried to make these the other day, but I only had dehydrated dates so I soaked them overnight and added the liquid with them. What happened? DELICIOUS Samoa DIP! Much like dark chocolate brownie batter dip, only with coconut goodness! Mmmm…
Mine were super dark… I actually am freezing them a bit. But not sure why they are so dark (maybe to much chocolate chip?)
Pretty much an idiot and used prunes. Whoops!l
Where to buy unsweetened coconut, I never see it in the grocery store!
Bob’s Red Mill makes it. I usually look in the natural food section, and find it there.
It’s cracking me up how many people say their kids like these. My three year old is still all over them, a year later. I squish them into Ikea ice cube trays, because I’m lazy, and this batch makes seven or eight little flowers.
These are amazing! We actually use them for my 2 years olds treat when she goes to the potty instead of jellybeans. She loves them and the fudge babies too
These are seriously delicious. Like, so so good. Good job Katie! But I was wondering, is the calorie content for the entire batch?
I think this is my new favorite fudge baby recipe! I’d been meaning to try them for a long time (samoas were my favorite GS cookie), but I liked the thin mint version so much I kept making those! Luckily today I was out of nuts, because these are so very good. I used almond extract since I was out of vanilla, and when I opened the food processor it looked (and smelled!) like I’d just blended some of the cookies in there! I wonder what they’d taste like with toasted coconut? I doubled the recipe, but now I’m wishing I’d quadrupled it, lol.
Made these. Amazing! Somehow the date/vanilla extract-mushiness tastes exactly like the caramel-y goo on samoas. Just way healthier. Love it! Am so glad I found your blog. 🙂
Oh hello! These are friggin’ FABulous! Made even more decadent by 2 TBS peanut butter 🙂