Forgive me while I go on a bit about the way this recipe is organized. Perhaps I am too used to things being in the proper sequential order but while I was baking these cookies I was baffled that no one has bothered to amend it. I could probably shave a solid 30-40 minutes off of the prep time just by using a bit of foresight and my superhero power of multitasking.
Amendment #1. 300 degrees comes quicker than 350. 20 minutes is longer than 10-12 minutes. Toast that coconut first. You can stir it every five minutes while you are painstakingly cutting the little circle centers out of your dough, re-rolling it and repeating. Trust me, there will still be time to get those extra 50 degrees of heat before you are done with this job.
Amendment #2. Unwrap the caramels while your cookies are baking and your toasted coconut is cooling. I mean, really.
Amendment #3. Dip the base of your cookie in melted chocolate and transfer to parchment paper BEFORE you put the caramel/coconut topping on. Duh. Then you don't have to move your cookies around so freaking much. This is important because you are attempting to get one buttery substance (caramel) to stick to another buttery substance (shortbread). Your only hope is gluing that shit together with chocolate and not touching it until you get it in your mouth.
Next time I will be baking the bars instead because it occurred to me a bit late in the game that I do not own any kind of cookie cutter. So I used a cup. Oh well, big cookies are better -even though I did make tiny bitesized ones out of the center holes (adorable).