This is Good Taste, a guide to good snacking in the Bay Area. Today, we celebrate the opening of Girl Scout Cookie season in the Bay Area, which runs through Mar. 17. Check out five snack hacks to take your treats straight over the top. Thank you to Girl Scouts of Northern California for sending sample boxes of this year’s lineup—a dream come true for a former Brownie.
Tagalong on a Date
This is the only one that I think has a clever name, because all you need for this idea is to cut a crispy chocolate covered peanut butter Tagalong in half and stuff it into a pitted Medjool date. Put that up against any dessert mignardise (final sweet bite) at a fancy restaurant where people on dates spend too much money.
An Adventureful Breakfast
I wouldn’t advise making a habit of drinking this caffeine and sugar-heavy concoction, and it might be better consumed with a meal in the afternoon than in the morning, but try it once if you like being full of adventure: blend two to four scoops of Straus Family Creamery’s coffee ice cream, half a cup of full fat milk (Straus if you want the best), and two Adventurefuls, the brownie cookie with caramel and sea salt.
Adventurefuls debuted in 2022, when we last made Girl Scout Cookie recipes in this column, and the formula has been improved for the 2024 season. That hit of sea salt is crucial once you blend up your breakfast (or whatever), since it provides a counterpoint to all the sweetness. The beverage is technically a shake, but Straus ice cream pints tend to be fairly soft, so you might end up with more of a coffee milk.
Thin Mints Are Vegan! Ice Cream Sandwich
Did you know that Thin Mints are vegan? I made mini ice cream sandwiches with Humphry Slocombe’s vegan cherry elderflower ice cream, which has flecks of chocolate in it, and that was an idea that I will revisit seasonally. If you have patience, you can make up a nice batch of these and freeze them for future instant gratification. I also put some Thin Mints in the freezer in order to use them as crumbled cheesecake tart crusts soon. That could easily be made with vegan cream cheese alternatives.
Samoa to India to the Bay
The chewy chocolate-coconut Samoas have always been a personal favorite, and now I can’t imagine them without a big scoop of Mom’s Cardamom ice cream from San Leandro’s Koolfi Creamery in between. All these flavors absolutely live together in harmony. You are so welcome, it’s selfless work I do here.
Trefoils, the shortbread cookies shaped like the Girl Scouts logo, are great with jam to make sandwich cookies. Blenheim apricot jam by Emeryville’s INNA Jam is a personal favorite, but it’ll work well with whatever you like, especially if you give it a while to sit and do whatever the cookie equivalent of marination might be. The flavors soak in and intermingle, and it’ll be hard to stop at just one—just as the Girl Scouts intended.
Tamara is the publisher of California Eating and the founder of the new online Music Book Club.
