- Girl Scout is an organization created for girls aged 5 to 18, who are grouped by age and distinguished by different colored uniforms. According to the official introduction of the Girl Scouts, the organization will focus on life skills STEM、 Combining outdoor activities and entrepreneurial spirit with citizen
- participation. Girl Scouts can learn traditional cooking, handicraft making, and outdoor camping courses, as well as financial knowledge, product design, business development, digital film production, and website design. According to the latest statistics, this project has approximately 1.7 million members.
- Girl Scout cookies. Each Girl Scout Council holds an annual cookie sales event, which is one of the ways to raise funds. The event usually lasts for six to eight weeks and takes place between January and April. The 2019 cookie season officially began on January 2nd. It is reported that this cookie sales activity originated during World War I and has now become an important source of funding for Girl Scouts activities.
According to the official website “Meet the Cookies” of the Girl Scouts, there are a total of 12 flavors of Girl Scouts cookies available for people to choose from this year. However, the specific flavors of cookies that can be purchased vary from region to region.
The Development History of Girl Scout Biscuits: From Home style Baking to S’mores
The history of Girl Scout cookies can be traced back to 1917, the fifth year after the establishment of the organization. At that time, a group of girl scouts in Oklahoma held a cookie sale in their high school cafeteria to raise funds for the scout’s activities. At first, these cookies were ordinary homemade cookies. Subsequently, Girl Scouts in Connecticut and Massachusetts also began such cookie sales.
In July 1922, American Girl magazine released the recipe for Girl Scout cookies, which included butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. The price of the raw materials ranges from 26 cents to 36 cents, and it can produce 6 to 7 dozen (12 in total) cookies at once. American Girl suggests in the article that these cookies can be sold door-to-door at a price of 25 to 30 cents per dozen. In that era, although the ingredients were very simple, all cookie making was done by girls themselves, and sometimes some elders would also participate. My grandmother used to help me make these cookies, “an 83 year old former Girl Scout told Time magazine
This family style baking did not last long. In 1934, the Girl Scouts of Greater Philadelphia successfully sold the first commercially baked version of Girl Scout cookies, and two years later, the Girl Scouts organization officially abandoned the original family style baking. In 1939, the Girl Scouts launched the first generation Thin Mint (mint chocolate cookies). A small episode in between was during World War II, when the Girl Scouts gave up selling cookies and instead sold calendars due to shortages of flour, sugar, and butter. After the war ended, they started selling cookies again.
In 1951, the basic series of cookies was officially established, which were divided into sandwich cookies, shortbread cookies, and Thin Mint/Thin Mints/Chocolate Mint mixed flavor cookies. In the late 1940s, a total of 29 bakeries made Girl Scout cookies. But in the 1960s, the Girl Scouts reduced their team of licensed bakers to 14 people. By the end of the 1970s, it had been reduced to four, and in the 1990s, the Girl Scouts had lowered this number to two.
Where there are classic cookies, there will be forgotten cookies. Among the various cookies launched by Girl Scouts, shortbread/trefoil and Thin Mint are the best-selling. Kookaburras and Golden Yangles, experimental cheese cookies, gradually withdrew from the biscuit stage. Stewart Goodbody, the PR director of the Girl Scouts of America, said in an interview with The Washington Post, “Every variety of Girl Scout cookies during the dry season is a response to consumer trends and past cookie sales. In the 1990s, we introduced ultra-low fat apple cinnamon and Ole Ole flavors; now we have gluten free formulas such as toffee and caramel chocolate
Today, all Girl Scout cookies are produced by only two bakeries, ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers. That’s why cookies with almost identical appearances have two names. Taking chocolate striped coconut caramel cookies as an example, if they are produced by Little Brownie Bakers, they are called “Samoas”, and if they are produced by ABC Bakers, they are called “Caramel deLites”. In Detroit, you can buy peanut butter cookies produced by Little Brownie, while in Chicago, the manufacturer of these cookies has become ABC.
So what are the differences between the Girl Scout cookies produced by the two companies? From the formula table, there are some subtle differences. The Los Angeles Times conducted a detailed tracking of Girl Scout cookies produced in different regions, and the results showed that ABC Bakers’ Thin Mint is more crispy to chew and has a stronger mint flavor than chocolate. In contrast, Little Brownie Bakers’ Thin Mint has a richer and smoother chocolate coating.