Samoas Dream Cake

This cookie season marks the 35th birthday of the Samoas Girl Scout Cookie!

Each year, we hold an annual conference for our volunteers to kick off the Girl Scout year and get them pumped and ready to go. For this event, I was asked by the product sales team to make some cakes for their room. Once I saw the picture of the cake, I couldn't say no, I knew that I had to make it!
Here is my final version, a bit different than the recipe looked like, but more on that in a minute. :) It was quite a yummy cake!

So I glanced over the recipe, thought it was no problem and set out to shop for the goods needed to make this. Got everything home and the next day started the baking process, I read over the whole recipe and realized that there were some steps missing in the making of the cake, (mostly on the ganache) but luckily I have baked enough I was able to make it through. 

The most notable differences between my cake the one pictured on the recipe card, are that I did mine as a double layer instead of a triple (I learned with the German Chocolate Cake that triple layer yields very large pieces of cake - too much for one person, and since this was going out to the masses I thought it better to do double.) Also, the recipe said to take the cake out of the springform pan, and then put the ganache on and the chopped cookies up the sides of the cake. Well, I made 4 of these (yep that is right, 4) :) and needed to transport all of them to the event, so I just kept the cakes in the pan and put the ganache on, and let it drip down the sides some then put the cookie bits on the top of the cake. I think that it turned out well, and is probably a lot easier than trying to get the cookies evenly around the sides. So, I'd recommend doing what I did with the cookies on the top. You can make it look prettier if you do the ganache out of the pan and control where the drips down the sides are going. Also, after two cakes that the sides aren't frosted, I found I like the look of that if the cake has a pretty filling to display.

So, here we go with the how to. 

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

1 box yellow cake mix & ingredients needed to make it. 

For the Coconut Caramel Filling:

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 cup heavy cream

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick butter

(If you are doing a two layer cake, you can cut these portions in half)

For the crust & top:

2 box Samoas Girl Scout Cookies

2 oz chocolate chips (you can eyeball this)

For the chocolate ganache:

1 cup heavy cream

10 oz chocolate chips

(They list other ingredients for the ganache, but don't tell you what to do with them, so I just made it how I like it and I know works)

Directions:

1. Mix and bake the yellow cake according to the directions on the box using three eight inch pans. (Now, if you are doing a two layer cake you have two options. You can just bake in two pans, and have thick layers, or you can bake in three pans and still have decent sized layers with an extra yellow cake left over. This is what I opted for and let Thomas have the extra cake, with some chocolate frosting of course) Leave oven on when finished baking.

2. Prepare the coconut caramel filling by mixing brown sugar, egg yolk, cream, and vanilla.

Melt butter in a saucepan, then add cream mixture

Cook mixture over medium heat until it boils for one minute - stirring often with a wire whisk.

Remove from heat and stir in coconut flakes. Chill mixture in refrigerator.

3. Line a 10 inch springform pan with parchment paper. 

Chop one box of Samoas and press into bottom of pan. 

Sprinkle 2 oz of chocolate chips over cookies, place in oven until chocolate chips melt.

Using back of a spoon, spread chocolate over cookie crumbs as evenly as possible.

4. Place first layer of cake on top of melted chocolate and cookie bits. 

Spread half if doing a three layer cake, or all if doing a two layer cake, of the coconut caramel filling over the cake.

Place second layer of cake in pan. If doing three layers, put remaining filling over the cake and then place the third layer down. Chill cake while making chocolate ganache.

5. Prepare the chocolate ganache. Place the chocolate into a medium bowl and set aside.

Heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil, watching carefully so it does not boil over (I did not watch carefully and had the boil over.) It just takes a couple seconds of boiling for it to spill over the sides of the pan.

Immediately pour the cream over the chocolate and stir with a whisk until smooth. Let the ganache cool slightly before pouring onto the cake.

6. Take cake and remove the sides of the springform pan. (I did this to take a picture, but like I said before I needed to transport 4 of these so I just kept the sides on while I did the ganache.

Pour chocolate ganache onto the center of the cake and use a spatula or spoon to ensure it covers the entire top of the cake, with some drips down the side if desired.

7. Chop the second box of Samoas cookies and put on top of the cake. (If you'd like you can cover the sides of the cake with the ganache or some frosting, and put the cookies around the sides of the cake.)

And there you have your Samoas Dream Cake! Happy Birthday Samoas!! Little Brownie Baker has more great recipes using Girl Scout Cookies - be sure to check them out!