This winter was the first time in years that I've purchased Girl Scout cookies. I stopped buying them because I find them impossible to resist; while eating a sleeve of Thin Mints feels glorious while you're doing it, the pangs of guilt and regret that follow are less gratifying. But several friends of mine have daughters in the Scouts who were selling cookies this year. Of course I was happy to support these young ladies. And just as important, Stella Parks has a couple of recipes for homemade Girl Scout cookies in Bravetart and I wanted to try them and be able to make a side-by-side comparison with the real thing.
Thin Mints are my favorite Girl Scout cookie by far and I was psyched that Bravetart includes a recipe for Homemade Thin Mints. The cookie recipe is actually the same as the one for Stella's Homemade Oreos, with mint extract added. To make the dough you beat room temperature butter, sugar, golden syrup, baking soda, salt, coconut extract, and peppermint extract until light and fluffy; and add sifted flour and Dutch cocoa. You can use the dough immediately and I rolled it out between two sheets of parchment without using any additional cocoa powder or flour.
The recipe instructs you to roll the cookies to 1/4 of an inch and to cut them with a 2-inch diameter fluted round cutter. I used 3/16-inch pastry rulers and a 2-inch fluted cutter and got exactly 48 cookies from the recipe. You're supposed to bake the cookies for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, but when I pulled by first pan of cookies out of the oven, smoke was literally rising from around the edges of the cookies. Through some experimentation, I figured out that baking them for 14 minutes at 350 degrees worked much better, providing a cookie that was still dry and crisp, but not burnt.
Once the cookies are baked and cooled, you just coat them in tempered chocolate. Stella says that the real trick is finding the right chocolate that is not too sweet or too astringent. She recommends Valrhona 55% Equatoriale or Callebaut 54.6% couverture. I've made two batches of these cookies, coating one with Cacao Barry 38% Lactée Supérieure and the other with Cacao Barry 64% Extra-Bitter Guayaquil. Now that I've discovered the method of using microplaned cocoa butter to temper chocolate, I didn't have any problems with the coating process, and my cookies were firm and easy to handle at room temperature. Both chocolates produced delicious cookies, although I prefer the dark chocolate version.
The photo above shows my homemade dark chocolate Thin Mints on the left and the real thing on the right. The homemade version is just as good, but markedly different. My chocolate coating was significantly thicker. Even though I used couverture with high fluidity, there's no way I could get a chocolate coating as thin as the one on a real Thin Mint (which is definitely not actual chocolate, by the way -- while the ingredient list on the box includes both cocoa and Dutch cocoa, it doesn't include chocolate).
Also, the homemade cookie was very firm, and I was worried that my tasters might find this objectionable. But one colleague pointed out that many fans of Thin Mints enjoy them straight from the freezer when they are super crunchy, and he enjoyed being able to get the crunchy texture at room temperature. Other tasters complimented the stronger mint flavor of the homemade version. All around, my tasters gave this cookie raves. And I do too.
The need to temper the chocolate and individually coat each cookie makes this recipe a bit labor intensive, so I don't think I'm going to be able to set up shop to put the Girl Scouts out of business anytime soon. But it's pretty awesome to be able to produce Thin Mints at will whenever the urge strikes!
Recipe: "Homemade Thin Mints" from Bravetart by Stella Parks, recipe available here from the Washington Post.
Previous Posts:
Thin Mints are my favorite Girl Scout cookie by far and I was psyched that Bravetart includes a recipe for Homemade Thin Mints. The cookie recipe is actually the same as the one for Stella's Homemade Oreos, with mint extract added. To make the dough you beat room temperature butter, sugar, golden syrup, baking soda, salt, coconut extract, and peppermint extract until light and fluffy; and add sifted flour and Dutch cocoa. You can use the dough immediately and I rolled it out between two sheets of parchment without using any additional cocoa powder or flour.
The recipe instructs you to roll the cookies to 1/4 of an inch and to cut them with a 2-inch diameter fluted round cutter. I used 3/16-inch pastry rulers and a 2-inch fluted cutter and got exactly 48 cookies from the recipe. You're supposed to bake the cookies for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, but when I pulled by first pan of cookies out of the oven, smoke was literally rising from around the edges of the cookies. Through some experimentation, I figured out that baking them for 14 minutes at 350 degrees worked much better, providing a cookie that was still dry and crisp, but not burnt.
The photo above shows my homemade dark chocolate Thin Mints on the left and the real thing on the right. The homemade version is just as good, but markedly different. My chocolate coating was significantly thicker. Even though I used couverture with high fluidity, there's no way I could get a chocolate coating as thin as the one on a real Thin Mint (which is definitely not actual chocolate, by the way -- while the ingredient list on the box includes both cocoa and Dutch cocoa, it doesn't include chocolate).
Also, the homemade cookie was very firm, and I was worried that my tasters might find this objectionable. But one colleague pointed out that many fans of Thin Mints enjoy them straight from the freezer when they are super crunchy, and he enjoyed being able to get the crunchy texture at room temperature. Other tasters complimented the stronger mint flavor of the homemade version. All around, my tasters gave this cookie raves. And I do too.
The need to temper the chocolate and individually coat each cookie makes this recipe a bit labor intensive, so I don't think I'm going to be able to set up shop to put the Girl Scouts out of business anytime soon. But it's pretty awesome to be able to produce Thin Mints at will whenever the urge strikes!
Recipe: "Homemade Thin Mints" from Bravetart by Stella Parks, recipe available here from the Washington Post.
Previous Posts:
- "Save One For Your Mouth: Chocolate-Andes Mint Drops," October 13, 2012.
- "A Dish Best Served Cold: Chocolate Mint Thumbprints," March 24, 2011.
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