Archives for February 2013

It’s still Girl Scout Cookie Season, and we’re still on the fringe, being gluten free and all. Here’s the thing, though. The fringe is NICE. There are homemade copycat recipes for gluten free girl scout cookies here on the fringe. After Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs and Do-Si-Dos (yup – we’ve made them all) come Lemonades.

These light wafer sandwich cookies have pretty intense lemon flavor, thanks to True Lemon crystallized lemon. It adds lots of lemon flavor without changing the moisture content of the cookies, which we would have to balance out with more flour or perhaps more confectioners’ sugar. They also have a fair amount of lemon zest, since you can’t beat those essential oils in that lemon rind, and a bit of lemon juice in the filling. But the true star … is the True Lemon (I buy it at my regular large grocery store).

I also pressed an indentation into half of the cookies before baking, just so they look a bit more authentic. I stopped short of creating the lemon sections. But I thought about it. A lot.

I used a certain piping tip in an effort to make a single, relatively flat layer of filling, but clearly that is not … essential.

What is essential, though, is standing up for what’s right. And although the Girl Scouts have other things on their minds (like tying a proper knot and perhaps getting a merit badge by helping an old lady like me across the street), I have one thing on my mind: making sure Team Gluten Free has Girl Scout Cookies. Here’s how:

Sorry, Girl Scouts, but you have forsaken us. We have no choice but to take matters into our own hands. These gluten-free Samoas (a.k.a. Caramel Delights) are way, way better than the original. And the original is one great cookie. But these are better for one main reason: coconut chips. Shredded coconut tastes like dental floss. Coconut chips (which I buy in my local health food store, and sometimes on amazon) are nice, big flakes of shaved coconut. When you toast it, and then crush it, you’ll never wanna touch the shredded stuff again.

The shortbread cookie hiding underneath that coconut-caramel layer and all that chocolate must be hearty and it must be snappy. Resist the urge to add more butter to the dough to make it pliable! If it’s super simple to roll out, it has too much butter and it will bubble and spread as it bakes. Trust me – I’m a pseudo-professional with a culinary degree from a crackerjack box. Oh, just trust my rather unfortunate recent experience, if nothing else. I messed up many, many times on the cookie alone before I got the proportions just right.

And these are juuuuuuust right. Here’s how it’s done, sister:

Don’t forget the drizzle on top. It’s just not the same without it.

Try one of these, and then tell me you’re missing what’s missing. Go on! I dare you. Tell the Girl Scouts to take a page out of THIS book! Here’s the printable recipe, with all the details. Read it allllll the way through before you get started.