State Fair of Texas 2012 offers fried Samoa Girl Scouts cookie

by Teresa Gubbins

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The Fried Thin Mint had already been done.

DALLAS — State Fair of Texas fried food vendors, watch your back: The Girl Scouts are coming for you.

To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas have commissioned a Fried Samoa Girl Scouts Cookie which they'll serve at the 2012 State Fair of Texas.

Christi Erpillo, an award-winning State Fair vendor, has devised a Samoa wrapped in a wonton skin and fried, then drizzled with chocolate, caramel, and coconut, which she says faithfully recreates the Samoa experience. Take that, Fried Butter.

The Fried Samoa will be part of a major exhibition by the Girl Scouts this year, said Girl Scouts spokeswoman Melanie Cornell. "We're taking over the Hall of State for the entire State Fair and doing a whole Girl Scout experience," she said.

They chose the Samoa as the Girl Scout cookie to fry after a year of debating which would be best.

"Somebody else did a fried Thin Mint in California, but we thought the Samoa made more sense," she said.

Erpillo, who won the Big Tex Best Taste Award in 2009 for her Deep Fried Peaches & Cream, said that the Samoa was always going to be her first choice.

"It is my favorite cookie in the world, bar none," she said. "In March I had to go to the hospital and my husband did not bring me flowers, he did not bring me candy, he brought me a box of Samoas. I love the caramel, I love the coconut."

She said that one of her main objectives when frying the cookie was to preserve the Samoa flavor.

"A lot of times when we’re frying things for the fair, you fry them but you lose the taste of what it is, and it can become gimmicky," she said. "We did not want to make it gimmicky for the Girl Scouts."

The biggest challenge was to protect the cookie.

"Any time you put something in 400-degree oil, you have to figure out a way to protect it," she said. "You can put it in a batter or give it a coating of some kind. It was about our fifth or sixth attempt at trying to figure it out. Each time we did it, we kept losing the taste of the cookie. We finally cut the wonton skin into a circle with a cookie-cutter. On top of that we put another layer of caramel, another layer of coconut, and drizzled it with chocolate, so that it mimicked the outward appearance. So you have the cookie on the inside and the flavors on top of wonton wrapper. They look really good."

Cornell promised this is not a transparent gambit by the Girl Scouts to seize momentum from this year's State Fair Big Tex Awards. Those don't even get underway until mid- to late-summer, said State Fair spokeswoman Sue Gooding.

"The Samoa will not be entered into the Big Tex Choice Awards, but we have plenty of new foods that are tried every year that aren’t part of the contest," Gooding said. "The Girl Scouts 100th anniversary that will be held at the fair this year is a big part of our programming. We celebrated out 125th last year, so we’re all about milestones. They're known for their cookies, and we are the Fried Food Capital of Texas, so it did make a good marriage to see a cookie you could deep fry."

The fair did have Fried Cookie Dough in 2007.

"We had fried cookie dough, but we have have not had a fried cookie," Gooding said. "It’s fun and creative. And really it's what you would expect: If you say Girl Scouts – are you going to fry a cookie?"

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