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.
Can you PLEASE try to make the Savannah Smiles? They’re my FAVORITE cookies and they remind me of this tea festival that we used to go to in South Carolina. They had cookies that were IDENTICAL to the Savannah Smiles so when I joined Girl Scouts I begged my mom to get as many as possible. I would love it if you made a healthier version that you can make whenever you want.
Another very simple delicious treat!
Katie, these are AMAZING! I am addicted! I think I can replace normal Girl Scout Samoas with these now! I changed a few things about the recipe and it turned out perfectly too! Instead of chocolate chips, I used cacao powder and I also did not add salt to make them healthier! These are amazing…everyone should make them!
These are super yummy Katie:) I have a question,the food in the pics u post
Do u actually eat it or is it like one for show?
Trying to find a healthy dessert close to german choc. cake for my sons Birthday Day . I’m going to try this one and add peacan’s.
I made these last night (only the larabar form) and oh my gosh are they good!! I’m absolutely addicted to larabars but these tasted so much better! I wanted something sweet but still natural. I had everything on hand and whipped this up in my tiny little food processor which worked out great! I will be making these again! 🙂
These look sooo good! I want to make these for my friends but I know that a few of them hate shredded coconut (they have no idea what they’re missing lol), can I leave it out and add more chocolate instead?
Hi, make these coconut-free ones instead! https://lett-trim.today/2009/10/13/make-these-now/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
I, too, had looked at the ingredient list on girl scout cookies and was discouraged. Tried these tonight and loved them! 30 seconds to throw it all together and another minute to blend and roll into balls. So simple! Thanks for the recipe!
In my packaging, 2 Tablespoons of Coconut is 10 grams. Do you recommend sticking to 2 tablespoons or going with 30 grams? I love them in the ratio you have them but I was wondering if your nutrition would be changed if you changed this.
HI Katie,
I counted 8 forms of sugar in the ingredient list for Girl Scout Cookies! : Sugar, Corn Syrup, Sweetened Condensed Milk, sorbitol, invert sugar, glycerin, caramelized sugar, and dextrose. Way to much. And, I have to share. I don’t like avocados…but I like them in your food! I plan to try this recipe this week. I made the avocado bites already. They were a big hit! Thank you!