GIRL SCOUT COOKIES - A WONDERFUL TRADITION

I'm sure like many of you I got the great news recently that my Girl Scout Cookie order is ready!  It is a truly wonderful time of the year where I throw my diet out the window and savor the those delicious cookies.  My In-Laws live in Savannah, GA so I had the opportunity to learn about the origins of the Girl Scouts during one of our trips when we visited the Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low House (the founder of the Girl Scouts).  It got me wondering how the cookie tradition started (I may have missed that part of the tour! J)

Luckily, the Girl Scout website is chalk full of a ton of information.  I found this brief history of the cookie origins here.  There are a ton of additional details if you are interested.

Girl Scout Cookies^® had their earliest beginnings in the kitchens and ovens of our girl members, with mothers volunteering as technical advisers. The sale of cookies as a way to finance troop activities began as early as 1917, five years after Juliette Gordon Low started Girl Scouting in the United States. The earliest mention of a cookie sale found to date was that of the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project in December 1917.

In July 1922, The American Girl magazine, published by Girl Scout national head headquarters, featured an article by Florence E. Neil, a local director in Chicago,Illinois. Miss Neil provided a cookie recipe that was given to the council's 2,000 Girl Scouts. She estimated the approximate cost of ingredients for six- to seven-dozen cookies to be 26 to 36 cents. The cookies, she suggested, could be sold by troops for 25 or 30 cents per dozen.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Girl Scouts in different parts of the country continued to bake their own simple sugar cookies with their mothers. These cookies were packaged in wax paper bags, sealed with a sticker, and sold door to door for 25 to 35 cents per dozen.

An Early Girl Scout Cookie^® Recipe

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar plus additional amount for topping (optional)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Cream butter and the cup of sugar; add well-beaten eggs, then milk, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking powder. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Roll dough, cut into trefoil shapes, and sprinkle sugar on top, if desired. Bake in a quick oven (375°) for approximately 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges begin to brown. Makes six- to seven-dozen cookies

Now, don't get me wrong, those sound great but I'm definitely glad the recipes have expanded in the past several decades.  I'm most grateful for the Samoas and the Tagalongs,  two of my favorites -

However it looks like they may have some competition with these recent additions...Yum!

What is your favorite?