How vegans can enjoy Girl Scout cookie season

Ok, I know it's only January, but I am fairly positive that I have already found my favorite recipe of 2009. Drum roll please. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumclang! It's this homemade version of the Thin Mint a.k.a. the best cookie in the world.

That's right folks, girl scout cookie season is upon us and here are are some reasons why you should make your own instead of shelling out $4.50 per box:

1) Girl scout cookies infamously use a ton of packaging. No need to destroy the Earth anymore than is necessary!

2) Like 99% of mass produced foodstuffs, girl scout cookies contain all sorts of weird ingredients such as TBHQ which has been shown to cause tumors in lab rats (although to be fair, what hasn't been proven to cause cancer in those little furry buggers???). Not to mention milk which may be a problem for you if you are a vegan, which if you are reading this blog, you may very well be.

3) The girl scouts actually only get 50 cents per box sold. So why not just donate 5 bucks to your favorite troop instead. For that matter, why not donate 5 bucks to a worthier cause. Girl scouts don't really need your money to go on fancy vacations--which is what my troop always did with our funds.


Now you may be reading this post and remembering that I am on a detox which means I really have no business making chocolate cookies dipped in even more chocolate. Ahhh yes, it's true. I did take a little break from the detox to make these, but only because I HAD to. You see, Kirby Von Scrumptious and her boy toy Joe were awesome enough to watch my beloved doggie while I hit the slopes in Mammoth earlier this month, and I absolutely had to give her a little token of my appreciation. You see? Making these cookies was an absolute necessity . Of course, half way through the baking process I remembered that Kirby was also doing the detox. Doh! Luckily, as any girl scout knows, thin mints are best enjoyed straight out of the freezer, so these babies will last a long time, as in they will be there for when the detox ends. The Von Scrumpster, knowing my love of toy cameras, also got me this awesome fisheye camera for Christmas which I used to record my Mammoth trip. Don't you wish Kirby was your BFF too???

Back to les cookies: to veganize the recipe I simply used Earth Balance in place of butter and soy milk in place of dairy. When I first tasted the dough I thought the peppermint was too overpowering, however, after baking and then being dipped in chocolate, I think next time I will actually pump the peppermint extract up from 3/4 tsp. to a whole teaspoon. I also tried using less butter in the chocolate dip portion of the recipe as, although the coating is completely delish, it does taste a bit buttery. However, you really need the butter to make the chocolate be the right consistency. These cookies at bottom are ones where I didn't thin the chocolate enough and you can see they are pretty gloppy and unpretty. Next time I will experiment thinning with soy milk instead of Earth Balance for a subtler taste.

101 Cookbooks also has a recipe for thin mints that would be easily veganizable. I might try this recipe next time (although that won't be for many months as these cookies ended up SERIOUSLY comprising my diet) however Heidi has the peppermint oil in the coating and not in the cookie which is just plain inaccurate so I will have to remedy that :)
I highly recommend you making these, unless of course you aren't willing to pack on a few pounds in the name of sheer tasty pleasure.