A couple of months ago, Pillsbury announced that they would be releasing a line of Girl Scout Cookie-inspired baking mixes. The mixes would include both cupcake and bar/brownie mixes and would be inspired by the two most popular Girl Scout Cookie flavors: Thin Mints and Samoas. Recently, I saw these mixes available at stores in my area and headed out to pick some up to try, starting with the Pillsbury Thin Mint Brownie Mix.
Mint and chocolate are a match made in heaven, which is what makes Thin Mints so popular in the first lace. The crisp cookies have a very dark, bittersweet cocoa flavor that is overlaid with a strong mint essence and the whole thing is dipped in a thin coating of melted chocolate. For this mix, the brownie batter is flavored heavily with peppermint and small chunks of actual Thin Mint cookies are added in. The mix is easy to stir together with nothing more than a spoon and bakes into a batch of perfectly chewy/fudgy brownies in about half an hour.
The consistency of these brownies is very good and they feel rich with every bite. Like the cookies that inspired them, the brownies are heavy on the mint and almost leave you feeling refreshed after each bite. If you’re a fan of the cookies, you’ll know this isn’t a bad thing, but the brownies definitely aren’t for those who don’t enjoy minty desserts. There are quite a few bits of cookie in the mix, but I wished that there were more. The cookie pieces had a tendency to sink down into the batter and some stuck to the bottom of my pan as I cut the brownies. The pieces were all very uniform in size and I felt that a little variety would have made the brownies more exciting. That said, they were chocolaty and remained crisp during baking, which helped make a clear connection between the finished brownies and the cookies that inspired them. They were eaten up quickly with nothing but compliments from my taste testers, so I would judge this mix as a big success and would definitely use it again when I’m in a Thin Mint mood!
What do you think?