I love Girl Scout Cookies. Samoas, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils, Tagalongs, Thin Mints…I love them all. If I were pressed, I’d have to say Thin Mints are my favorite. We keep the box in the freezer and eat them cold. So good.
Making a dairy and egg-free version for the kids wasn’t as hard as I was expecting. The trick is using cake flour and powdered sugar. It’s a food processor dough, kind of like chocolate play-dough. It’s very nice to work with.
The only thing that takes a while is dipping the baked cookies in chocolate, but once you get a process going it’s pretty quick and soon you’ll have a freezer full of safe Thin Mints for everyone!
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Dairy-Free Thin Mints
- Yield: 100 1-inch cookies 1x
Description
These dairy-free and egg-free thin mints take a bit of time to make, but taste even better than the original! The chocolate cookie dough comes together quickly in the food processor and is a dream to work with, it’s like chocolate play-doh.
Ingredients
Cookie Dough:
- 1 1/2 cups cake flour (I used Swan’s Down)
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder ( I used Nestle)
- 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 14 T (3/4 cup plus 2 T) dairy-free margarine or shortening at room temp
Chocolate Coating:
- 2 cups of safe chocolate chips for dipping ( I used Divvies)
- 2 T. shortening
- Peppermint extract to taste
Instructions
- Place everything except the margarine into a food processor and pulse a few times to mix.
- Slice the margarine or shortening into the food processor bowl.
- Pulse about 8-10 times until the margarine is well blended, the mixture is still crumbly and hasn’t come together into a ball yet.
- Dump the crumbly mixture onto a piece of plastic wrap and form into a flat disk.
- Refrigerate for at least an hour.
- Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut into 1 inch rounds or hearts. I have a really cool set of nesting fluted round cutters that I got from Amazon, which I use all the time, the smallest size is perfect.
- Place the cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and place in the freezer.
- Preheat the oven to 350 while the cookies freeze.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. They should puff up, then flatten out. When they start smelling good, they’re probably ready.
- Let them rest on the baking sheet for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack, they’re pretty fragile when hot.
- When cool, you can dip them! Melt the chocolate chips and the shortening in a microwave, 30 seconds at a time, stirring well until they are completely melted. Mix in the peppermint extract. I used about 1/4 teaspoon per cup of chocolate chips, you may want to use more or less. Dip the cookies quickly and place on a Silpat or waxed paper. Make sure to tilt and shake the cookies so the chocolate coat is thin and not really overwhelmingly thick. Once you’re done, put all the cookies in the freezer. Once the chocolate is dry, you can transfer all the cookies to a freezer-safe container for safe-keeping! Enjoy!
Notes
These are kinda fussy as far as measuring goes, I think because the dry ingredients can get really packed down during storage. For the flour, cocoa and powdered sugar, fluff them up with spoon, then scoop with the measuring cup and level off with a knife.
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Homemade Samoa's have been on my "to bake" list for at least two years now. We'll have to do the whole line up and have a Girl Scout Jamboree! Libby
Mmm! I can see it…Sunbutter-tagalongs, Sunbutter Do-See-Dos…. I have a few recipes to try for the Samoa, but I had to focus on one obsession at a time!
Yum! These look delicious!
I have been craving Thin Mints ever since seeing all the boxes at work. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THE RECIPE!!! I am so excited to try it out. I have tried to satisfy my Thin Mint craving with Mint Oreos which sorta works.
These look wonderful! And I'm sure they're even better than what we're used to from the box. Anything from scratch is. :)Thank you for sharing!
Thanks to your webinar on Kids with Food Allergies, I’ve been adding many of your recipes to my To Do list. I tried making these today as my Thin Mint craving exceeds my budget 😉 However, mine did not turn out well. I followed your suggestion about fluffing the dry ingredients before measuring. I did use 1/2 fleishmans and 1/2 butter as we don’t deal with dairy allergy here. My cutter was closer to 1 1/2 inches. My cookies turned out crumbly and bitter. The crumbly I can deal with, but the bitter taste made me double check that I hadn’t forgotten the sugar. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks
Hmm. I’m due to make these again, so I’ll double check everything. The butter might make a bit of difference in the crumbly nature, as will the larger size of cookie cutter. These are very tender because of the cake flour. The cookie itself is not very sweet, the chocolate dip is what brings the sweetness. But they shouldn’t be bitter…let me do some investigation!