It looks like it’s getting to be Girl Scout Cookie time again. I remember when this time of year rolled around our house was filled with boxes and boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. Kelly was very active in Girl Scouts and Claire was a scout leader for a number of years. So our house became the warehouse for cookies for their troop every year.
One year when Kelly must have been about six and Dave was two, they filled their wagon with girl scout cookies and toured the neighborhood selling cookies. They must have been really good salesmen or really cute — I think they sold hundreds of boxes of cookies. In out neighborhood back then, kids were allowed to roam around without adult supervision — a “freedom” than most Girl Scouts don’t enjoy today.
When Claire was putting together the cookbook for our church, I learned that the first girl scout cookies were baked by the girl scouts themselves and sold to raise money for their troops.
Cookie “sales” began in 1917 — a Girl Scout Troop in Oklahoma baked and sold sugar cookies at their high school cafeteria to raise fund for a service project. The idea caught on with other troops and they started baking cookies and selling them door-to-door.
In 1922, a scout leader named Florence E. Neil published a shortbread cookie recipe that eventually evolved into the present day Trefoils. The recipe’s ingredients were very cheap — which meant maximum profits, and soon the Girl Scout’s main source of funds came from cookie sales. In 1935, the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York was the first local Girl Scout council to license a commercial baker for their cookies. The National Girl Scout Organization licensed commercial bakers nationwide a year later.
Sales were halted during World War II due to shortages of sugar, flour, butter, etc. Girl Scouts sold calendars during the war.
Today, there are two licensed bakers manufacturing Girl Scout cookies — Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Bakers.
So here’s to the Girl Scouts and their cookies. As the Cookie Monster says, “I’d give you a cookie, but I ate it.”
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