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Homemade Copycat Thin Mint Cookies with a deep, dark chocolate cookie coated in a thick layer of minty chocolate. Don’t wait for a Girl Scout to stop by your house – keep a batch in the freezer year round!
A long, long time ago, I was a Girl Scout … and a Brownie before that. And I bet if I got real serious I could find my old badges and sash. Yes I used to sell Girl Scout cookies and yes they’ve been around for a long, long time. But now I don’t know any Girl Scouts and nobody asked me if I wanted to order cookies this year. So I did what any baker would do, and made my own!
After researching several popular Thin Mint cookie recipes, I found they’re all very similar and all look amazing. Deciding which recipe to use can be agonizing – ha ha.
I recently made some wonderful Chocolate Wafer Cookies so I thought I’d go down my own path and adapt that recipe by omitting the espresso powder.
These cookies were rolled extra thin to about 1/8-inch and used Special Dark Cocoa Powder in the mix. If I remember correctly Thin Mints have a very dark chocolate cookie on the inside.
Most of my research found recipes recommending semi-sweet chocolate chips as the coating.
But again I was thinking about the dark chocolate on the cookies I remembered. I went with dark chocolate chips for the coating and tested two different brands.
We taste tested dark chocolate chips to find the best for coating these cookies.
While the taste of the two different dark chocolate chips were very much the same, the dipping texture and final product was a little better with the Toll House Dark Chocolate Chips. The other brand I used was Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Chips. The Toll House morsels are full size chips and the Hershey’s are mini’s so I’m sure that made the difference in the melting factor.
These Thin Mint Cookies make lovely little gifts ready to pop in the freezer.
The cookies are better kept in the refrigerator or freezer since the chocolate is not actually tempered to prevent melting on your fingers.
Are you ready for a stack in your freezer?
Be sure to check the peppermint and adjust the amount to your own taste. The recipe as written below seemed just about right to us!
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Thin Mint Cookies
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Yield: 48 cookies
Course: Dessert
A delicious Girl Scout cookie copycat!
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup Special Dark Chocolate Hershey’s Cocoa, unsweetened
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1-2 teaspoons peppermint extract, to taste (not spearmint)
- 2 to 4 cups dark chocolate chips (see note below)
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl beat the granulated sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until combined. In a separate small bowl whisk together the flour, salt, cocoa and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the butter and beat until combined. Transfer the dough to a bag or cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Roll dough out to ⅛ inch thick on a large piece of parchment or wax paper. Using a cookie or biscuit cutter, cut dough into 2 inch rounds. Bake on a parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet for 8-10 minutes. Since the cookies are a very dark chocolate it may be hard to tell if they are done. If you start to smell chocolate, the cookies are done. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
- Melt 1 cup of chocolate chips in a deep 2-cup measuring cup. I always use the microwave melting instructions on the individual bag or label. Melt the chips at 50% power for 1 minute, then stir. Repeat using 50% power at 30 second increments until almost smooth. Stir until all chips are melted and add ¼teaspoon of peppermint extract. Taste the chocolate and increase or decrease the extract depending on your preference.
- Dip a completely cooled cookie in the chocolate coating both sides. Using a large serving or meat fork, hold the chocolate covered cookie over the melted chocolate tapping gently to remove the excess. Slide the Thin Mint onto wax paper. Cool until the chocolate is set and refrigerate or freeze until ready to serve!
Recipe Notes
- Toll House Dark Chocolate Chips worked best for me.
- Note the wide range in the amount of chocolate chips. You can dip one side of the cookie and use about 2 cups or use 4 cups to cover the entire cookie. They were great either way.
- Wafer cookies are based on a recipe by King Arthur Flour
Nutrition
Calories: 96kcal | Carbohydrates: 13g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 0.1g | Cholesterol: 9mg | Sodium: 51mg | Potassium: 67mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 8g | Vitamin A: 65IU | Vitamin C: 0.04mg | Calcium: 28mg | Iron: 0.4mg
If you love copycat cookies as much as we do, check out our Little Debbie Copycat Oatmeal Cream Pies, and these fantastic Old-Fashioned Iced Oatmeal Cookies. Another delicious favorite are these copycat Lemon Coolers – a must try for sure! And finally, check out our Orange Milano Cookies and if you love a good Fig Newton, you’ll love our homemade Fig Newtons – so delicious!
I hope you have a wonderful week – and thanks so much for stopping by!
Tricia
Rhonda
I made the Thin Mint cookies. When I added the peppermint extract the chocolate ceased. We don’t have toll house chocolate chips where I live in Canada. I had the spread the chocolate on the top of the cookies Also, I took the first batch out of the oven when the delicious chocolate scent was in the air (8 minutes). They were soft/chewy. At 10 minutes for the 2nd batch they were crisp.
Tricia Buice
Sorry you had trouble Rhonda. Thanks for letting us know.
Pink Patisserie
These are beautiful! I definitely need to try these next! My cat is fond of butter so we are always on guard too. 🙂
Erin
OH MY! These look perfect!
Anna and Liz Recipes
Tricia – if I made these – I would EAT the entire batch and gain 10 pounds….LOL…<br />but you are one fabulous baker!! love these!! 🙂
scrambledhenfruit
Captain Cat sure is purdy! The cookies are purdy too. There's no shortage of the real thing here right now though, because: 1.I teach elementary school and 2.I'm a sucker and buy a box from everybody who asks. When my freezer stash runs out I know where I'll look for the recipe to replenish it. 🙂
Tanna at The Brick Street Bungalow
Oh, wow! Captain Cat sure IS purdy! LOL! He knew that lemon tart was delicious. LOL! <br /><br />I love thin mints, Tricia, and I KNOW these are even better than the GS ones! blessings ~ tanna
Angie's Recipes
wow Tricia, these mint cookies look so professionally prepared. The glaze is perfect. Meow … Captain, keep puring!<br /><br />Angie<br /><br />
Blond Duck
So much better than girl scouts!
Inside a British Mum's Kitchen
these are just lovely! I LOVE these and would a lovely gift!<br />Mary x
pia
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Wendy Sondov
The stacks in our freezer, supplied by our cheerful neighborhood girl scouts, disappear quickly. Then we used to be left waiting for another year to go by. Now I can keep the freezer stocked year round 🙂 Thanks for the recipe!
Mary
What a treat! These really look amazing and this is a very good idea for those of us whose Girl Scouts are all grown up:-) I hope your week is off to a great start. Blessings…Mary
The Café Sucré Farine
Oh my, these look amazing – good thing we're not neighbors – I'd be sneaking in your refridg all the time when you weren't looking My mom could testify that this is VERY true, were she still alive – she always wondered where all the thin mints went 🙂
Gerry @Foodness Gracious
I have a bunch in the freezer right now, This year was my daughters first time selling and she done pretty darn good. She did set a goal of 3000 boxes when she heard she'd get an iPad for that. I had to explain a few things 😉
Shiloh Barkley
They are soooo pretty. I don't think I could make them. I would eat them all. ALLLLL!
Sue/the view from great island
I wish I were getting a shipment of these cookies Tricia! I just got delivery of my Girl Scout Cookies and promptly sent them off to my daughter, so I'm desperately in need of a few of these 🙂
Mary Younkin
ARGH! Between you and Sue, I am going to cave and eventually try my hand at these, aren't I? They look amazing! Your cookies are simply gorgeous, Tricia. Again and again, you make me wish that we were neighbors. Your son and daughter in law are SO lucky!
Chatty Crone
I just bought a box for my grandson. Only you could do something so lovely.