Thin Mints

Wow. Just wow.

The Girl Scouts' best kept secret: Thin Mints are easy to make. No, really. They're easy to make. And with this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, they're ever so slightly healthy (whole wheat pastry flour only). Of course, they're way more healthy than the kind out of a box since they have no trans fat or preservatives. And the higher the quality of chocolate you put into it, the better I think they'll taste. These were made with pretty good cocoa powder (Ghiardelli) but totally cheap chocolate coating (Baker's Chocolate), and were still great. A good chocolate bar would probably have given me a much shinier end product.

Just to show you what options you have, this is my "double boiler." It's a stainless steel skillet set on top of a pot that it happens to fit perfectly. Set the water to medium so it simmers and you won't have to worry about the chocolate burning. A metal bowl that fits on top of the pot without its bottom touching the water also works. Alternatively, you can microwave the chocolate (not in a metal bowl, of course) and stir it every 30 seconds.

The baked cookies. I realize they're misshappen. I don't care. They're for eating, not for a museum. I'm pretty terrible at baking cookies in general. My cookies always lose their shape, come out too soft, get burnt around the edges, etc. So for these to have come out anywhere near edible would have been surprising. For them to come out as deliciously as they did is a full on miracle. And look how ugly they were before they were coated with chocolate. Hideous.

I'm going to say it again: these are some of the easiest cookies I've baked to date. The dough comes together in under 10 minutes, you put it in the freezer for 20, bake for 10, and coat after it's all cooled down. If you're busy, mix the dough one day and put it in the fridge. Bake the cookies the next day, and coat the third. Bake half the dough now, freeze the rest for next week. Whatever! It's really very simple. Everything can be done in under an hour if you're quick in the kitchen.

The recipe is very well written, but I did make a few adjustments so your cookies may look different. I only had regular sugar, so I food processed a cup of it with a tablespoon of cornstarch to create homemade sugar. I'm not on crack; the Cook's Thesaurus says you can do it (the site also has fun pictures of more kinds of sugar than I knew existed.) And it turned out fine. I also didn't use a cookie cutter to cut out circles. Instead, I took Claire's advice and rolled it into a log, froze for twenty minutes, sliced misshapen circles, and popped it into the preheated oven immediately.