Homemade Gluten Free “Thin Mint” Girl Scout Cookies

How to Make Thin Mint Girl Sout Cookies

Imagine you are a seven-year-old girl, and are chomping at the bit to participate in your troop’s yearly Girl Scout Cookie sales. Now imagine that you have severe allergies and cannot eat-not even a taste-a single cookie you sell. We have a little one in our troop with wheat, egg, and nut allergies. Since I was already going to make them gluten free for our family, I omitted the egg, too. No problem. These cookies will wow anyone.

If you are one of the 12 million Americans who suffer from food allergies, you too can recreate these seasonal favorites using store-bought mixes in your own home kitchen.

“Thin Mints” are the top seller each year—the thin minty chocolate wafer topped with a thin layer of mint chocolate is amazing, and I can see why people stock up. If you are not gluten free and would still like to make them, use a traditional chocolate cake or fudge brownie mix.

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“Thin Mints”-mint chocolate wafer cookies dipped in chocolate

yields 36 cookies

for wafer:

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 (16-ounce) package gluten-free brownie or chocolate cake mix

5 tablespoons milk (can use soy)

1/4 teaspoon mint extract

for chocolate coating:

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup butter

1/4 teaspoon mint extract

1-3 tablespoons water

Combine butteimg_3347_edit-small1r, brownie or cake mix, milk, and mint extract in a large mixing bowl. Stir with a fork until a ball of dough forms; it will be quite crumbly. Roll dough out 1/4-inch thick between two pieces of parchment paper. Use a 1 1/2 inch cookie cutter (or the lid from a spice container) to cut out circles of dough. Place circles on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Use the blunt end of a skewer to poke 5 holes in each cookie. Bake at 350° for 8-12 minutes. Let sit on sheet for a few minutes before moving.

When cookies have cooled, combine chocolate chips, butter, mint extract and 1 tablespoon of water. Heat in a double-boiler or in a slow cooker (I used a 4 quart crockpot) until liquidy. Stir well, and drop wafers in, one at a time, and ladle chocolate over the top. Lift coated cookie out with a fork, and chill in the refrigerator until set. If your chocolate begins to harden, reheat as needed, and add a bit more water.

The Verdict

I brought these to share at our last girl scout meeting. 7 out of the 8 girls liked them, and the little one with allergies was overjoyed. She ended up with chocolate all over her face; it was quite cute. The first time I made the cookies, I used the Bob’s Red Mill chocolate cake mix. The cookies worked, but I just can’t get over the aftertaste from Bob’s products. I love how they are readily available, but I’m just not a fan of the garbanzo bean powder. The second time I made them, I used the Pamela’s fudge brownie mix, and strained out the chocolate chunks. Those cookies were much better, and still got a nice crisp crunch after baking.

These cookies melt in  your hands. Have wipies close by, and store in the fridge.

related: Gluten-Free “Trefoils”

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39 Comments

  1. Such a thoughtful thing for you to do! I loved reading this :).

    I will have to bookmark this recipe and try it someday. I’m not a huge fan of girl scout cookies (I ODed on them several years back lol) but this recipe sounds yummy :).

  2. YAY! Thanks! My hubby likes the occasional sweet treat (it has to be gluten-free), and this will be a fun variation for us!

  3. I can’t WAIT to make these and try them (like everyone else!) I have a 6 year old daughter with Celiac and she is a Daisy scout and cannot have any of those Girl Scout cookies she used to always eat and enjoy. Thin mints were her favorite! You are a life saver! I am headed to the store for ingredients now…

    THANK YOU!!!

  4. My 13 year old daughter was just diagnosed with Celiac disease in December. I love bringing home new treats to try. BTW, we both had pondered what caused the “metallic” taste in a couple of the mixes we tried (pancake, chocolate chip cookies), now I know it’s probably the garbanzo bean powder (mystery solved). Thanks for the recipe!

  5. I used to love Thin Mints so much–but it’s the MINT I’m allergic to! [sob!]

  6. My friend sent this to me today. I’ve made some GF thin mints in the past, but this looks SO much easier with the mix! I agree that the garbanzo bean taste just doesn’t work with cookies! Okay, truth is I just can’t get used to the taste, so I do brown rice flour & various starches. I love Pamela’s mixes, so can’t wait to try this. As a Girl Scout mom (my girls can still eat gluten, but one is questionable), I just finished helping sell 300 boxes, including many boxes of Thin Mints, and once again couldn’t taste one. I’m an adult & can deal with it. I’m so glad you were willing to try this for you troop member so she could have something special, too!

  7. Thanks so much for sharing this recipe——-so sweet of you to make such a nice effort for the little girl with allergies!
    Cindy

  8. Thanks for sharing! Cookie time has always been hard on my son (3 sisters used to be in GS). I am also glad to hear that I am not the only one who does not like the after taste associated with Garbanzo. I try to sub it out anytime I can!

  9. Just took a batch of these to my local Celiac group meeting and they vanished like the wind! I used Pamela’s Chocolate Cake Mix which has a 21 oz, package instead of 16 oz. so I had to change the proportions but they turned out really good and crisp. Thanks for telling me they would be really crumbly or I would have thought I was doing something wrong.

    Great tip on using the crockpot for melting the chocolate. Thanks for a great recipe!

  10. yay, Karen! I’m so glad they turned out well for you. I would not attempt to melt chocolate any other way… 😉
    xoxo steph

  11. i too, have a daughter that is a daisy scoout and a hubby that is the cookie dad and a garage full of cookies i can’t eat due to my gluten allergy.

    trader joes has a great gluten free brownies, i have some in the pantry, i look forward to trying these!

    now for gf samoas & tagalongs. 🙂

  12. Pingback: Diannes Dishes
  13. I tried this recipe, using a home-made brownie recipe (dry ingredients only) and real butter.The dough seemed dry, so I added a little milk. It totally flopped. I don’t know why – maybe the milk, maybe the butter. It just oozed all together and ran over the cookie sheet. The “goo” was very tasty though! 🙂 I think I will try it again without the milk and with shortening.

  14. Hi Karen,
    oh no! I’m so sorry you had this experience. My dough was very very crumbly, and I did use real butter (salted, I like the salted butter, even though “they” tell you not to use it in baking).
    my fingers are crossed the next ones work better.
    xoxo steph

  15. Karen (3/22 posting) – when I made these for my Celiac group, I was VERY glad Stephanie mentioned that the dough would be crumbly because I told my hubby they looked too dry. But when I rolled them out, they stuck together and when I baked them, the challenge was to not eat them before they were coated.

    It is a recipe worth working on until it works for you.

    Karen (3/14 posting)

  16. You are my HERO! Last week someone linked me here and I have been addicted to your site since. I didn’t even notice at first that you were GF, but I am so glad I did! I don’t miss gluten, but there are days I’d love a thin mint.

  17. I can’t wait to try these! Have you tackeled samoas yet? I have to eat GF, and I would love a substitute for these. I made this recipe (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Oatmeal-Peanut-Butter-Cookies-III/Detail.aspx) for Do-Si-Dos yesterday using mama’s GF almond blend and Cream Hill Estates Oats and it was delicious!! I think the Mama’s almond and coconut flour blends are awesome, you can use them just like normal flour in recipes and all you have to add is xanthum gum!!

  18. Well, after making the wafer part, I really didn’t think these were going to taste so great, but boy did they come together! Here’s what I did – hopefully these tips will help someone. Mixes vary greatly so some experimentation may be needed. I used Hodgson Mills chocolate cake mix (15 oz.) and the wet ingredients in this recipe were not nearly enough to make it into a dough, so I added another T. of butter and an egg. That seemed to do the trick. Baked for about 10 mins. I forgot to poke holes in the first tray of cookies but it didn’t seem to matter. And definitely use peppermint extract and not “mint” extract, which is a mix of spearmint and peppermint and would be gross in this, IMO. After trying the cookie by itself, I was disappointed because I thought that it wasn’t sweet enough, didn’t have enough peppermint flavor, and didn’t have the right consistency (not crunchy enough). I went ahead and made the coating anyway and I’m sure glad I did. Didn’t use water in the chocolate coating because that goes against everything I know about cooking with chocolate and it came out just fine. I coated and refrigerated the cookies, and when they were cold, they tasted so good! Magically, the cookies were more crispy and the mint in the chocolate coating added the right minty flavor to these. They were great! Make sure the cookies are on the thin side so they end up a tad crunchy and not cakey. Stephanie, I love your blogs, recipes and cookbook. Thanks so much and keep the great recipes coming!!

  19. A little late to the discussion, but thank you so much for sharing this recipe! I made these for a gluten/egg free friend and she LOVED them. Has anyone had success doing it dairy free? My friend’s mom is dairy free and has been raved to about the cookies 🙂

  20. Yes, I have made these dairy free. Simply substitute Earth Balance for the butter and organic soy or rice milk for the milk. They come out wonderfully gluten free AND vegan! Thanks so much for posting this!

  21. Another great tip for making these: using a pastry bag, squeeze a dallop of chocolate onto a sheet of parchmet. Press the baked and cooled wafer onto it. Using the pastry bag once again, carefully squeeze just enough chocolate over the wafer to cover it. This will give the cooking a beautifully finished, professional look. 🙂

  22. Thank you so much for this! This is my first girl scout cookie season as a Celiac and I was very sad about missing out on my favorite cookie. Now I get to continue my tradition of eating Thin Mints while watching the Oscars!

  23. I had the same thing happen as happened ro Karen! Thet all melted together all iver the cookie sheet and made a sirt of burnt gii. We’ve opened the windows, and sent the daughter out to buy a new box of gf cake mix. Wish us luck!

  24. I love that you have a recipe for the Thin mints. that is my Husband’s favorite cookie, he found out he has Celiac in 2005 and should not eat there cookies, but I just can’t keep him away form them, now I can make him the cookies and they will not hurt him to eat them, then he can still donate his money for the cause to these Girl Scouts,. thanks again, and yes everthing of Pamela’s flour and baking good’s are great, I love her Chol-chip cookie she has on the bag of flour. they are sooooo goooood too.

  25. these are amazing… one of my dear friends (who is a lifelong girl scout, and who I met in scouts as a kid) just had a baby, and these are already chilling in the fridge, waiting to be brought to the hospital! thank you so much.

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