The top three winning Girl Scout Cookie Recipes from our local Cookie Bake-off, plus lots of tips for hosting your own Girl Scout Cookie bake-off.
Sweet & Salty S’mores Cupcakes, plus two kinds of Thin Mint Cupcakes!
I didn’t start out to be a Girl Scout leader. I was, am, and will always be a Camp Fire kid at heart, but when my oldest entered Kindergarten a few decades ago, Girl Scouting was it where we lived, so that’s what we did. Five Girl Scout daughters, four troops, and twenty years later, I finally hung up my Leader hat… but I kept my Volunteer hat. (Always will.)
That’s how we all ended up at a Girl Scout Cookie Baking Competition a few cookie seasons ago. Competition in event was open to any Girl Scout from our community.
Girl Scouts is such an iconic organization that it’s easy to overlook how daring an idea it was for founder Juliette Gordon Low to gather those first 18 girls in that troop in Savannah, Georgia. It was 1912, after all, and women wouldn’t earn the right to vote for another eight years.” — Anna Maria Chavez
ExciteMint Fudge, S’mores Nutella Cheesecake, and Do-Si-Do Brownie Pops
How to Host a Girl Scout Cookie Bake-off
PLUS Top Winning Girl Scout Cookie Recipes
- Samoa Cheesecake Bars [Judges’ Ultimate Winner]
- Strawberry Thin Mint Cookie Delight [People’s Choice]
- Toffeetastic Butterscotch Mud Pie [My Personal Choice!]
Four Important Questions to consider when hosting a Bake-off.
1. What is kind of Bake-off will it be?
Specifically, what is the bake-off challenge?
In the case of our bake-off, the specific challenge was to create a dessert using at least one variety of Girl Scout cookie as a primary ingredient.
Who can enter?
Our bake-off was open to any registered Girl Scout.
Can contestants have more than one entry?
Can a contestant enter more than one recipe? If there are multiple categories that a contestant is eligible for, can they win with more than one entry?
Is this an individual competition, or can contestants work in teams?
Must recipes be fully cooked at home, or must they be completed at the competition?
Is there a theme or primary ingredient?
We had both a theme and a primary ingredient: Desserts and Girl Scout Cookies.
How much of each recipe must a contestant provide on the day of the contest?
Each girl who entered this bake-off was asked to provide two batches of their recipe: one for Judges to observe for appearance, presentation, etc., and a second for tasting by judges and event goers. After the judges had made their determination, the first batch was offered up for tasting by the crowd as well.
Tiny Lemon Trefoil Cakes
2. Who decides who wins?
Will you have a panel of Judges? Do the attendees get a vote?
For our Girl Scout Cookie Bake-off, the hosting troop assembled a panel of five judges. Because of my long history with the hosting troop, I was asked to be a Judge. However, I’ve been trying to cut back on sugar lately, so at the last minute I handed that esteemed privileged over to Mr B.
(Passing the Judge’s torch to Mr B ended up being a good move for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it allowed me time to walk around and take pictures of all the sweet entries. It also saved me from the imminent tummy ache that would plague him for the rest of the day.)
PRO TIP: Mr. B’s had one vital tip for would-be Girl Scout Cookie Bake-off judges: Drink water. Lots and lots of water.
This is, unfortunately, a lesson he learned the hard way. Even though he and the rest of the judges were very careful to eat only a very small tasting from each entry, because he neglected to drink enough water, he spent most of the day following the competition with a very uncomfortable tummy ache.
This Mini-Martha-in-training even matched her dress to her entry – “Naomi’s Tagalong Storm Cake.”
3. How will winners be decided?
It is important to clearly define the points and systems upon which the entires will be judged ahead of time.
If you are hosting a bake-off, you will need to figure out how the winners will be picked. I won’t try to tell you how to run your circus, but this is the system that was used for our Cookie Bake-off, and it seemed to work pretty smoothly.
Judges
Each Judge was given a clipboard, pencil, and instruction sheet outlining a scoring system for assigning points to each point system for scoring each entry.
Each contestant was assigned a number for judging.
Entries were judged on three elements:
- Taste
- Presentation
- Use of Girl Scout Cookies
Submissions were judged in each of these categories on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest.
“The Judges”
Competition was divided into three Divisions, based on age. Three overall winners were then chosen from the winners of each age bracket. An Ultimate Winner was then chosen from the Division winners, for a total of ten winners.
While I wandered from table to table taking pictures, Mr B spent his time hunching over his clipboard, carefully evaluating each tasty bite that was brought to him by his assigned assistant. Together with his fellow judges, he crunched, munched, nibbled, and savored samples from each of the nearly twenty entries.
Judging a bake-off is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it!
Mr B and I are both big Chopped fans, and I wasn’t surprised that this influenced his role as a judge in the competition. When Taste and Presentation scores were too close to make a call, Use of Cookie(s) tipped the scales.
We found ourselves judging not only what[the girls] made, but their use of the cookie as well. Did they get the ingredients in? Could you taste those ingredients? That made it interesting. It also made it challenging for us, because we challenged ourselves to see if the cookies came through in each dish, or if they were just sprinkled on top.” ~ Mr B
Cups set up for “Peoples’ Choice” voting
Event Attendees
Each attendee was given a number of tickets (5). Voting boxes with the name of one recipe was placed on a central table. Attendees circulated, trying samples of each recipe and then placing their tickets in the boxes representing the recipes they liked most. The recipe that received the most tickets won the People’s Choice Award.
4. What kind of recognition and/or prizes will you award?
You can award anything from a handshake to a certificate to gift cards donated by the community. What I noticed as the prizes were award was, especially with regard to the younger kiddos, bragging rights were worth more than just about anything.
Additional Considerations for Hosting a Bake-off
This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list; there are plenty of additional considerations to make, including location and facility set-up, announcement of the contest, timing, and so forth. However, if you can get all these questions answered, you’ll be off to a great start!
Now, on to the winning recipes in our Girl Scout Cookie Bake-off!
Judges Choice {The Ultimate Winner}
At the end of the day, it was the ooey gooey decadence of these Samoa Cheesecake Bars that won out. (Personally, I think using the term “bar” to describe this dessert is probably a bit of a stretch, but then again, who says you can’t eat cookies with a spoon?)
Oooey, Gooey, Samoa Cheesecake “Bars”
Samoa Cheesecake Bars
Ingredients
Oreo Crust
- 20 Oreos
- 5 tablespoons butter melted
Cheesecake Layer
- 16 oz. cream cheese softened to room temperature
- 1 large egg
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Coconut Caramel Chocolate Layer
- 11 oz. package caramels
- 3 tablespoons heavy cream
- 1 1/2 cups coconut toasted
- 6 crushed Samoa cookies
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 8x8 baking pan by lining it with foil.
- With a rolling pin or In a food processor, crush the oreos into a fine crumbs.
- Combine the crushed cookies and butter together in a medium bowl. Press cookie mixture into the bottom of the pan and bake for 9-10 minutes. Cool completely.
- With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese, egg, sugar and vanilla together until smooth and creamy.
- Spread cream cheese mixture over the prepared crust. Bake it for 30-35 minutes or until cheesecake is set. Cool completely, and then refrigerate for an hour.
- In a microwave-safe bowl, heat the caramel and heavy cream in the microwave on high for 30 seconds at a time. Stir and return to microwave until melted and smooth.
- Add the toasted coconut and crushed Samoas to the melted caramel mixture. Cool 10 minutes.
- Spread melted caramel mixture over cheesecake layer. Return to refrigerator and chill for 3 hours.
- Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time until smooth. Drizzle on top of caramel.
- Allow to sit for 30 minutes before cutting.
Notes
The People’s Choice
“It’s really hard to decide on a winner. Maybe we need to try them all again!”
Ultimately, “The People” chose the freshest, lightest, most simple dessert in the contest as their favorite. (Not a bad lesson there, folks.) Strawberry Thin Mint Cookie Delight has only three ingredients and takes less than five minutes to prepare.
People’s Choice Winner – “Strawberry Thin Mint Cookie Delight”
Strawberry Thin Mint Cookie Delight
Print Recipe Pin RecipeIngredients
- Whipped cream
- Strawberries cut up
- Girl Scout Thin Mints crumbled
Instructions
- Layer ingredients in cup. Serve immediately or refrigerate.
My Personal Choice
Finally, as a lover of all things caramelly and butterscotchy, this Toffeetastic Butterscotch Mud Pie with Shaved Chocolate was my personal favorite entry in the contest. My insider source (i.e., Mr B) tells me that it had a great chance to be the overall winner, but ended up coming in fourth because of poor pudding execution: the texture was just too grainy for the judges’ tastes. Flavor-wise though, it was delicious.
[Note: Granular consistency in homemade butterscotch pudding is a common, tricky challenge. It can be avoided by (a) being patient as you whisk in the cream, (b) tempering the cornstarch mixture, and (c) whisking continually as the mixture reaches a boil. You can make the pudding even smoother by straining the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve. For more complete directions about how to make super-smooth butterscotch pudding, check out this great post on TheKitchn.com]
Toffeetastic Butterscotch Mud Pie
Ingredients
Crust
- 1 box Toffeetastic Girl Scout Cookies
- 2 Tbls sugar
- 6 Tbls melted butter
Butterscotch Pudding
- 4 tbls butter
- 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/3 cups whole milk
- 4 large egg yolks
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons vanilla
Topping
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 ounces chocolate shaved
Instructions
Crust
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- In a food processor or by hand, finely crush your cookie crumbs. Add sugar and melted butter and stir to combine.
- Press crumb mixture into a 9" pie pan, and bake in preheated oven for for 8 to 10 minutes, or until warm, fragrant and lightly toasted.
- Set aside to cool.
Butterscotch Pudding
- In heavy saucepan, heat butter, brown sugar, and salt to boiling, stirring frequently. Remove from heat; set aside.
- In small bowl, stir cornstarch into 1/3 cup of the milk until dissolved. Add egg yolks; beat with whisk until blended.
- Into saucepan with brown sugar mixture, pour remaining 2 cups milk, heavy cream and stir to combine. Add the cornstarch mixture. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. When pudding comes to a rolling boil, remove from heat. Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Pour pudding into prepared pie shell. Refrigerate for 3 hours.
Topping
- Beat heavy cream in a chilled bowl with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. Slowly add sugar and continue to beat until stiff peaks form.
- Spread whipped cream over cold pudding-pie and sprinkle with shaved chocolate. Chill until serving time.
Congratulations to all the winners!
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Originally published April 11, 2017.
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If you ever find yourself traveling through southern Oregon’s beautiful Applegate Valley between Medford and Grants Pass, Pennington Farms is one stop you must plan to make. I fell in love with the place the first time I visited.
