Thin Mints Are My Favorite, What Are Yours?

Thin Mints with a Healthy Twist

If you haven’t noticed, it’s that time of year again…no, I’m not referring to spring cleaning, I’m talking about Girl Scout cookie season.   Outside almost every Harris Teeter/Walgreens/CVS and inside the mall there is a flurry of girls surrounding tables overflowing with cookies for sales.  Their eagerness to make a sale is endearing and their spirit makes me long to be a child again.  I was a Girl Scout myself for about 5 years and loved cookie season, my favorite cookie of choice being Thin Mints with Samoas coming in a close second.  What I did not love was selling them.  I never had the knack for going door to door, flashing my toothy smile, and attempting to win over the potential customer and make the sale.  I never won any prizes for top sales but I did put in my best Girl Scout effort.

Despite the fact these cookies have been for sale all over Charlotte I haven’t caved in and bought a box or two or three like I usually do.  What I have done is found a great recipe for Thin Mints I can make at home without the preservatives and they taste just as good maybe even better.  But I will let you be the judge of that.  Give these cookies a try and I am positive they will win you over just like the girls out there trying to make the sale.

I’ve only had these on their own but I’ve thought about crumbling these over a scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt or maybe even making a thin mint milk shake…yum!

Rolling and Cutting the Dough

Waiting for their turn in the oven

Cooling Stage

Freshly dipped in the peppermint coating

The Final Product

Homemade and All-natural Thin Mint Recipe
From the blog, 101 Cookbooks
Make 3 or 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

Chocolate Wafers:

• 8 ounces organic butter, room temperature
• 1 cup organic powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

Chocolate Peppermint Coating:

• 1 pound good quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
• natural peppermint oil to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350. Racks in the middle zone.
2. Make the cookie dough: In a mixer cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and cream some more, scraping the sides of the bowl a couple times if necessary. Stir in the vanilla extract and then the salt and cocoa powder. Mix until the cocoa powder is integrated and the batter is smooth and creamy, sort of like a thick frosting. Add the whole wheat pastry flour and mix just until the batter is no longer dusty looking, it might still be a bit crumbly, and that's o.k. You don't want to over mix and end up with tough cookies.
3. Turn the dough out onto a counter, gather it into a ball, and kneed it just once or twice to bring it together into once nice, smooth mass. Place the ball of dough into a large plastic bag and flatten it into a disk roughly 3/4-inch thick. Place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes to chill.
4. Remove the dough from the freezer and roll it out really thin, about 1/8-inch. You can either roll it out between two sheets of plastic, or dust your counter and rolling pin with a bit of flour and do it that way. Stamp out cookies using a 1 1/2-inch cutter (I used a fluted round cutter). Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes (My oven is a little temperamental so I usually cut baking times short and took these out after 7 to 8 minutes). Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely on a baking rack.
5. While the cookies are in the oven you can get the coating ready.  Slowly melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally until it is glossy and smooth. (I melted the chocolate in a metal bowl over a pot of simmering water but this can also be done very slowly on a low setting in the microwave.) Stir in the peppermint extract. (I used 2 tsp but I think I still could have added another teaspoon)
6. Finishing the cookies: You are going to coat the cookies one at a time and then gently set them on a parchment-lined baking sheet to set. Drop one cookie into the chocolate and (using a fork) carefully make sure it gets fully coated. Lift the cookie out of the chocolate with the fork and bang the fork on the side of the pan to drain any extra chocolate off the cookie. You are after a thin, even coating of chocolate. Place on the prepared baking sheet, and repeat for the rest of the cookies. Place the cookies in the refrigerator or freezer to set. They will set at room temperature, it just takes much longer.