gluten-free girlscout cookie taste-alikes.

Is it just us, or is this time of year absolute torture? Girl Scouts peddling delicious cookies door-to-door. Girl Scouts outside the grocery store. Girl Scout cookie-buying sheets in the office. There’s nary a place to escape if you’re a cookie-loving gluten-freer. According to the Girl Scout website, the future of a gluten-free cookie is dim, as their foray into the alternative cookie market via sugar-free cookies didn’t produce the number of sales they had hoped:

Q: Why don’t you offer cookies that are whole-wheat, wheat-free, non-dairy, dairy-free, vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free, organic, low-carbohydrate, low-calorie, low-fat, non-fat, fat-free, etc.?

A: The demand for specialty cookie formulations is simply not great enough to make it economically feasible to offer a variety of specialty types. Of all the different possible formulations, sugar-free seems to be the most popular, yet in the past, even the sugar-free Girl Scout cookies that have been offered have had to be discontinued due to lack of demand. (“Sugar free cookie” is not synonymous with a “diabetic cookie” labeling.) Our bakers continue to experiment and develop formulations that balance the best tasting cookies using the healthiest ingredients.

Thus, we are left to our own devices. And rather than biting our lip when a friend crunches down on one of those perfectly crisp thin mint cookies, let us unite, put on our aprons, and make our own Girl Scout cookies! Here is our roundup of recipes for the most popular Girl Scout cookie varieties, which we hope you will use, reference, taste, and send us a box of your faves (kidding! but only sorta!):

Do-Si-Dos
Peanut butter filling sandwiched between crunchy oatmeal cookies

Thin Mints I
Thin Mints II (NOT a gluten-free recipe, try subbing King Arthur’s Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Baking Mix for the flour called for in this recipe)
Thin Mints III
Thin, mint-flavored chocolate wafers dipped in a chocolate coating

Samoas I
Samoas II (NOT a gluten-free recipe, try using Bob’s Red Mill Shortbread Cookie Mix for the cookie base)
Samosas III (NOT a gluten-free recipe, try using pre-made gluten-free shortbread cookies such as Schar)
Vanilla cookies coated in caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and laced with chocolate stripes

Tagalongs
Crispy vanilla cookies layered with peanut butter and covered with a chocolate coating

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