The yearly Girl Scout Cookie Drive kicks off today with a new app and a new flavor – Savannah Smiles, yum, just like a lemon wedding cookie. And did you know that “the $700 million Girl Scout Cookie Program is the largest girl-led business in the country?”

As a kid, I remember the cookie drive. I would tell my troop leader how many boxes I thought I could sell and then off I’d be knocking on neighbor’s doors with my brother’s red wagon in tow full of Thin Mints, Trefoils (shortbread), and Do-Si-Dos (peanut butter). I had so much pride donning my green uniform and knew that this got our troop to camp every year. For many of us, it was our first “job”. 

According to girlscouts.org, “Girl Scout Cookies^® had their earliest beginnings in the kitchens and ovens of our girl members, with mothers volunteering as technical advisers. The sale of cookies as a way to finance troop activities began as early as 1917, five years after Juliette Gordon Low started Girl Scouting in the United States.

The earliest mention of a cookie sale found to date was that of the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project in December 1917. In July 1922, The American Girl magazine, published by Girl Scout national headquarters, featured an article by Florence E. Neil… provid[ing] a cookie recipe that was given to the council’s 2,000 Girl Scouts. She estimated the approximate cost of ingredients for six- to seven-dozen cookies to be 26 to 36 cents. The cookies, she suggested, could be sold by troops for 25 or 30 cents per dozen. In the 1920s and 1930s, Girl Scouts in different parts of the country continued to bake their own simple sugar cookies with their mothers. These cookies were packaged in wax paper bags, sealed with a sticker, and sold door to door for 25 to 35 cents per dozen.”

 An Early Girl Scout Cookie^® Recipe

 1 cup butter
1 cup sugar plus additional amount for topping (optional)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Cream butter and the cup of sugar; add well-beaten eggs, then milk, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking powder. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Roll dough, cut into trefoil shapes, and sprinkle sugar on top, if desired. Bake in a quick oven (375°) for approximately 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges begin to brown. Makes six- to seven-dozen cookies.

Today there are 12 flavors of Girl Scout Cookies with Thin Mints being the most popular and garnering 25% of all sales. Scouts learn a lot of life skills in the selling of these cookies: setting goals for themselves, managing money, decision making, working as a team and customer service. All wonderful things to support in our young girls.

For those of you who don’t know a girl scout but want to donate or are craving your yearly stash check out their new free mobile Cookie Finder app for your iPhone^®.

You can search for sales in your neighborhood, get details on your favorite Girl Scout cookies and find your Cookie Personality.