Archive for: Homemade Girl Scout Cookies
Several months ago, two Girl Scouts started a campaign to encourage the Girl Scout organization to remove palm oil from their cookies. Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva were working on a project to raise awareness of endangered orangutans and discovered that part of the reason that their habitat was being destroyed was to make way for palm oil plantations. Palm oil is a popular fat for processed food products because it worked as a substitute for some of the partially hydrogenated oils that companies, including the bakeries that supply the Girl Scouts, used in their products.
The girls campaigned to get the Girl Scouts to either remove palm oil from their cookies or switch to sustainably farmed oil. Initially, Girl Scouts spokespeople say that there was no viable alternative to using this mass produced palm oil in their cookies because they need them to be “sturdy” and have a long shelf life. After the girls spent months on the campaign, raising awareness with other troops and through the media, the Girl Scouts have finally announced that they are making a change. In a statement released Wednesday (9/28), the Girl Scouts said that they have directed their bakers to use as little palm oil as possible, and that they want their bakers to move to a segregated, certified sustainable palm oil source by 2015. In the meantime, the Girl Scouts will buy GreenPalm certificates, which offer a premium price to producers of sustainably farmed oil, to support the sustainable production of palm oil.
The girls both say that they will continue their campaign to promote the use of sustainably farmed palm oil elsewhere in the food industry, but having the Girl Scouts change their policies is a milestone victory. It also means that Girl Scout cookies in the future will be just a little bit better for us and for the planet than they are now. Of course, so are palm-oil free, all natural homemade Girl Scout cookies if you’re looking to have an excuse to make some cookies between now and next cookie season.
Over the past couple of years, I have put together a collection of a number of homemade recipes for Girl Scout Cookies. My recipes are made with all natural ingredients and, rather than having to wait for cookie season to come around, you can make them yourselves any day of the year. The Girl Scouts don’t currently make any of their cookies gluten free, and while some scouts are petitioning to try to get the organization to introduce a gluten free option, I decided that I would put together a recipe for some gluten free Girl Scout cookies that you can make at home. I started with Gluten Free Thin Mints, because the thin chocolate wafer cookies are the most popular flavor of Girl Scout Cookie.
Classic Thin Mints are light and crisp, covered with a thin layer of dark or semisweet chocolate. This gluten free variation has a very similar texture. The cookies are light and crisp, with a subtle cocoa flavor to them. They take on a whole new dimension once they’re dipped in a layer of dark chocolate that has both mint and vanilla added to it, becoming more flavorful and much more like the “real” thing. The cookies are good – gluten free or not – and they are a fantastic option for Girl Scouts and fans of Girl Scout cookies who can’t eat wheat.
I used a commercially available gluten free flour blend for this recipe because there are so many gluten free flour choices out there and it is much easier for most people to start with an already made blend, rather than combining a half dozen flours themselves. I tried out a couple of flours and the flour that I got the best results with a flour blend that included a good proportion of garbanzo bean flour (ground beans, essentially) and some fava bean flour. I used Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour and would definitely recommend it for these cookies. The recipe will work with other types of gluten free flour blends (as long as you choose an “all purpose” or “multi purpose” blend), but I found that the texture was not nearly as good when I used rice flour based mixes. The rice flour blends produced a cookie that was crisp, but had a gritty, unpleasant texture. The only drawback to the bean-based flour blend is that the raw cookie dough tastes pretty awful, due to some bitterness from the beans. Not to worry, however. Any off tastes bakes out completely in the oven and you’re left with a tasty wafer cookie that is chocolatey, slightly minty and just waiting to be dipped in chocolate! I’ve also had good results with C4C Gluten Free Flour.
The chocolate glaze is made with dark or bittersweet chocolate and butter, which gives it a thinner consistency that allows for easier dipping of the cookies. I stirred in a little bit of vanilla and peppermint extract (peppermint oil is fine, too) to the melted chocolate to enhance the subtle flavors in the cookies themselves. The cookies are best when they are freshly baked or stored on the kitchen counter, as they tend to soften up a little bit when stored in an airtight container, as many other cookies do. If you’re not going to eat them right away, pop them in the freezer and you’ll have a crispy Thin Mint at hand whenever you’re in the mood.
There are a few steps to making these cookies, but they’re really not that difficult and the result is well worth the wait. Minty, chocolatey, crunchy and totally gluten free – what more could you want, besides a Girl Scout to make them for you so you don’t have to do it all yourself!
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Girl Scouts have been selling cookies, in various forms and flavors, for decades now and the cookies are probably more popular than ever. But Girl Scouts themselves, as well as some of their parents, are starting to ask for some changes in the Girl Scout cookie lineup as they become more socially aware, more health conscious and more interested in the actual products they’re selling. Some girls are already asking for Girl Scout cookie makers to try to eliminate non-sustainably produced palm oil from their cookie recipes. Now, one mom and her Girl Scout daughter are pushing for the Girl Scouts to make at least one variety of their popular cookies gluten free. The mother in this case has started a petition in her area, Long Island, NY, to prove to the Girl Scouts that there is a market for gluten free cookies. Her daughter, who has been a Brownie for 2 years, has celiac disease and can’t eat the cookies that her friends, family and community members enjoy.
This young Scout is not alone. There are many other kids and parents with Celiac disease (as well as those who opt for wheat/gluten free diets for other reasons) who are either Girl Scout members or supporters of the organization that feel left out by the lack of gluten free options. The Girl Scouts say that they already conducted extensive market research and concluded that there isn’t enough demand to justify the expense of introducing a new cookie.
The gluten free market has boomed in the past couple of years, and given the fact that the Girl Scouts have introduce many new cookies heavily influenced by popular diets and trends in the past few years, it seems unlike them to resist going gluten free for at least one box. For instance, organization has featured Sugar Free Chocolate Chips and even 100 calorie pack Cinna-spins and low fat Daisy Go Rounds. They try new cookies all the time and change out those that don’t make it. Granted, all of these “diet” cookies were phased out, but they had their fans and if 100-calorie pack Girl Scout Cookies get a chance, perhaps it is time for gluten free Girl Scout Cookies to have one, as well.
Samoas cookies are great, but when you can’t have the real thing, a pint or two of Samoas Ice Cream, which Dreyers/Edys makes, can be a good stand in. The ice cream is vanilla caramel, with chunks of Samoas cookies and a fudge swirl. The flavors are basic – vanilla, caramel, coconut, chocolate and shortbread – and it’s easy to put them together into a homemade version of the ice cream.
Homemade Samoas are just too good to sacrifice into ice cream – although some might say that you’re just combining two of a good thing into an even better thing – after you take the time to make a batch from scratch . I prefer to put these flavors together in pieces because you get all the same flavors and it’s a whole lot easier. So, I used homemade vanilla ice cream as a base for a caramel and toasted coconut swirl and chunks of chocolate-dipped shortbread pieces.
The ice cream is a no cook recipe that uses milk and sweetened condensed milk. The sweetened condensed milk adds just about all the sugar that the ice cream needs, and also adds a hint of caramel flavor to the ice cream. If you don’t want to make this from scratch yourself, you can also start this recipe with about a half gallon of your favorite brand of vanilla ice cream.
I toasted the coconut, mixed it into some homemade caramel sauce and swirled it into the ice cream. For this particular batch, I actually used shortbread girl scout cookies that I dipped into melted dark chocolate. Again, any type of shorbread or butter cookie will work here. Stir the cookies into the softened ice cream along with the swirl. Let everything set up for a little bit in the freezer and you’re ready for a big bowl of Samoas.
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Samoas are easily my favorite Girl Scout cookie because of all the great contrasting flavors and textures they have. It is a shortbread-type cookie topped with caramel and toasted coconut then dipped in chocolate. I like them so much that I have a homemade version that lets me make them any time I want – no Girl Scouts necessary – as well as a slightly easier bar cookie variation that still captures those flavors. This time, I have yet another variation on the theme with some Samoas Cheesecake Bars. They’re not quite as cookie-like as my other homemade Girl Scout Cookie recipes, but I’m pretty sure that those girls could easily sell just as many of these bars!
These cheesecake bars are fairly easy to make and start off with a shortbread base topped with a layer of vanilla cheesecake, a combination I’ve used before in Vanilla Bean Cheesecake Bars. The bars are topped with a mixture of caramel and toasted coconut, then drizzled with chocolate. The result is a delicious bar with a buttery crust, creamy cheesecake, gooey caramel, crisp coconut and rich chocolate.
The only trick to making these bars is that you need to make the caramel sauce by hand. It needs to remain soft when refrigerated because the cheesecake bars need to be stored in the refrigerator. The bars are a bit less satisfying to eat when the caramel hardens up and you can’t slice into them! This caramel is smooth and rich tasting, and remains soft enough to slice easily after it has been spread on the bars and chilled, though it is firm enough that it won’t run everywhere and make a mess. You could get away with using a thick, store-bought caramel sauce if you want to give a shortcut a try, though.
This recipe makes a big batch that is easy to share, but equally easy to enjoy yourself. They keep well in the refrigerator, so you can take your time eating through them. There are several stages to making this recipe, but most of the down time is just waiting for things to chill. Be a bit patient and the results will be well worth it!
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