Homemade Thin Mints

When I was growing up, one of the women at my mom's office had a daughter in the Girl Scouts. Every year, my mom purchased a big grocery bag's worth of Girl Scout cookies, including at least three boxes of Thin Mints. This was a huge deal for me, because my parents were never big on letting me eat sweets as a kid. No sugary cereals, no cakes (except for birthdays), no pop tarts (WAH!!!)... But for some reason Girl Scout cookies were allowed. Maybe because it's a pseudo-charitable donation. I have no idea, but I can't really complain because to this day, I adore Thin Mints and Samoas (nee Caramel Delights).


For my last group meeting of Fall Quarter, I decided to try my hand at my childhood favorites. I must say, there's nothing quite like the combination of mint and chocolate, and these cookies smelled outstanding. I got so hung up on the smell that I tried one of the cookies before they'd been dipped in mint chocolate... I'll just say they looked better than they tasted, and they tasted much better after getting a thin coating of chocolate.

It took me a little while to find a recipe that did not require shortening. I am assuming that's what gives Thin Mints just the right amount of crumble and crunch, but as someone who is generally opposed to the idea of shortening, I had to scour the Interwebs just a little bit harder to find something suitable.


I eventually found a workable recipe from 101cookbooks.com, but I had to use AP flour instead of pastry, because I only keep AP and bread flour on hand. Also, I didn't have to patience to let the logs of cookie dough harden in the fridge for long enough, so the first batch came out about funny looking -- the dough kept sticking to my knife as I was cutting the disks, soI had to pat down the cookies with my fingers. I figure it's not that big a deal, since they ended up covered in chocolate anyway, but as kind of a neat freak, this bothered me a little... Finally, the recipe didn't recommend sifting the flour and cocoa powder but if I had to do this again, I definitely would sift the dry ingredients, because the pure cocoa powder tends to clump together, and you get little pockets of powder that are hard to mix into the thick dough.


All that being said, I'm not sure I will make these again, but it *has* gotten me thinking about how smart it would be to keep rolls of icebox cookie dough on hand for those "emergency" sugar-fix-needed situations...

Homemade and All-natural Thin Mint Recipe (adapted from 101cookbooks.com)

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 all-purpose flour

Chocolate Peppermint Coating:
1 pound good quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
natural peppermint oil to taste

Preheat your oven to 350. Racks in the middle zone.

Make the cookie dough: 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 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. (If I made these cookies again, I would sift together the flour and cocoa powder to fight the clump effect.)

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.

Rollout and bake: Remove the dough from the freezer and roll it out really thin, remember how thin Thin Mints are? That's how thin you need your dough, 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 (this time I used one with a fluted edge, I've done hearts and other shapes in the past). Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely on a baking rack if you've got one.

Make the peppermint coating:
While the cookies are in the oven you can get the coating ready. I use a makeshift double boiler to melt chocolate (a metal pan over a saucepan of gently simmering water), but I know many people who swear by melting chocolate in the microwave. Slowly melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally until it is glossy and smooth. Stir in the peppermint extract. If you think the chocolate needs a bit more peppermint kick, add more extract a drop or two at a time - but don't go overboard.

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 aforementioned prepared baking sheet, and repeat for the rest of the cookies. Place the cookies in the refrigerator or freezer to set.

Make 3 or 4 dozen cookies.