Homemade Thin Mints

It’s Girl Scout cookie time.  I am reminded of all the hours I  spent as a girl wandering the streets selling cookies.  Sometimes it was fun, but it was always a fairly arduous task.

Amazingly, the last year I sold Girl Scout cookies was 1998 (yes I was a Girl Scout til the bitter end) and the price has hardly gone up since then.  I always notice, however, when I buy them now, how small they are.  I have to wonder if they’re making them smaller instead of raising the prices…people don’t want to pay more than $4 or $5 per box, after all.

I always get the craving for Girl Scout cookies, but given that they are chock full of partially hydrogenated oils and perservatives, I got the idea into my head that I would make some homemade Thin Mints.

A quick googling yielded this recipe the introduction to which alerted me to the fact that the Girl Scout troops make very little of the proceeds from the cookies they sell.  I tried to remember our troop getting much from the long hours selling cookies, but all I can remember are the prizes I would earn if I would sell enough of them.

The recipe seemed easy enough and I embarked on it with glee.  Until I got all the way through the making of the batter to realize I had doubled the amount of flour in it!  Doh!!  What a rookie mistake!

I had half a mind to give up…  I didn’t.  I tried again. From the beginning.

The making of these homemade thin mints took up the bulk of my Sunday. I burnt the cookies a bit, but, on the bright side, the coating in ganache went much faster then expected.

My freezer is now filled with delicious minty cookies that are a little too crispy (my fault) and lacking the trans fats that make the originals so good (the recipe’s fault).

Though they are no substitute for the cookies I have eaten year after year, they are pretty good cookies.  Next time maybe I’ll try making their version of the sinfully delicious Samoa.