Ahhhh Thin Mints! Those delectable, delicious discs have been a classic Girl Scout cookie for the longest time. Our mouths are watering just thinking about them.
If you are unfamiliar with Girl Scout Cookies then, first of all, where have you been?!...and secondly, let us explain. Girl Scout Cookies started out way back in 1917.
This was the start of an annual cookie bake sale in order to fund troop trips for the Girl Scouts. The selling of Girl Scout Cookies is done by the Girl Scouts themselves, teaching them so many valuable life lessons.
They gain entrepreneurial experience, teamwork, and the importance of planning. It can also help to teach them money-management.
Over time, this has developed into the Girl Scout Cookie Service that we have today, where each different flavor you purchase helps to teach a certain aspect of a Girl Scouts’ learning.
When you buy a box of Thin Mints, for example, you are helping a Girl Scout to learn money management skills.
It’s so cool, right? On top of that, as if the wonderful cause wasn’t enough, they are utterly delicious!
However, no matter how delicious they are, vegans can not eat anything that isn’t vegan friendly.
When you first become vegan, it can seem that you are having to cut out so many of your childhood favorite snacks.
In this article, we are going to be exploring whether Thin Mints are one of the things you need to avoid.
We will be researching Thin Mints, and Girl Scout Cookies in general, to check the vegan friendliness of their products.
Good news…
We are super happy to report that Thin Mints are indeed vegan friendly.
They are a veganthin mint since they use almondflour. I love them with ice cream. I'm still looking for a good homemade thin mintsrecipe. Let me know if you have one! I'd love to find one for healthy thin mints without excess chocolate or refined sugar using unsweetened cocoa powder or some other healthy chocolate mixture. Gluten free thin mints would be ideal with a nice healthy chocolate coating without using dark chocolate.
For those of you who may not know, Girl Scout Cookies use two different suppliers to make their cookies - after all, that is a lot for just one supplier to handle! Both of the suppliers - Little Brownie Baker and ABC Bakers - create vegan Thin Mints.
Their recipe uses all vegan friendly ingredients, meaning that whatever supplier your box of the minty miracles come from, they are guaranteed to be suitable for all your vegan pals! The cookie dough uses coconut oil where appropriate and the chocolate meet Girl Scout Cookie season requirements. Peppermint extract is used where appropriate for all vegan varieties.
The ingredients for the Thin Mints made by The Little Brownie Bakers are as follows:
Enriched flour (wheat flour with vitamins and iron) Coconut flour and oat flour are not used
Sugar
Vegetable oil (made from palm kernel, palm, and soybean oil)
As you can see from their recipes - no animal products in sight! This means they are entirely vegan friendly!
What about their other flavors?
In fact, it is not just Thin Mints that are vegan friendly. Yep, you read that correctly.
There are other Girl Scout Cookies that are suitable for a vegan diet too. PETA, the well-known and world-renowned animal charity has confirmed this in an article and checks the vegan status of all of the Girl Scout Cookies regularly.
The vegan friendly Girl Scout Cookies that are currently available are:
Toast-Yay (by both suppliers)
Girl Scout S’Mores (only the ones made by ABC Bakers)
Thanks-A-Lots (only the ones made by ABC Bakers)
Lemonades (by both suppliers)
Peanut Butter Patties (again, only the ones made by ABC Bakers. )
As you can see, some of them differ depending on whether ABC Bakers or Little Brownie Bakers have made them.
It is, therefore, absolutely essential that you are confident who has made your particular box of cookies.
Rest assured though, the all-favorite, best selling Thin Mints will always be vegan, no matter who made them!
What about the ‘copies’ of Thin Mints by other brands?
It seems that there is a good portion of Girl Scout Cookies that are absolutely perfect for vegans, and we are especially happy that Thin Mints happen to be one of them.
We feel the need to point out here that there are many brands and stores, for example, Aldi, that offer their own versions of Thin Mints.
We want to make clear that the Thin Mints that we have researched are only those by Girl Scouts’ suppliers - The ABC Bakery and The Little Brownie Bakers.
Out of the many other types of Thin Mint-style cookies out there it can be hard to know the vegan status of their recipes.
We would advise you all to take extra care that you read the ingredients list on the back of the packet of any unofficial Thin Mints, as you cannot assume that the recipe used will be the same.
Is there dairy in Thin Mints?
No! We are very happy to inform you that Thin Mints are safe for vegans and those with a dairy allergy as they contain no dairy.
Keep in mind that they may be made in a factory that handles dairy and so, there may be a risk of dairy contamination.
However, Thin Mints are safe for vegan customers so you can get your Girl Scout Cookie fix whenever you want.
What’s more is that even though two different bakeries supply Thin Mints, you do not need to worry that only one of them is vegan as it has been confirmed by ETA (the animal charity) that both suppliers have Thin Mint recipes that are dairy-free!
So whether you dunk them in your coffee or put them in the freezer to make sure they are super crisp and crunchy, your Thin Mints are suitable for everyone, whether vegan or dairy allergy sufferer and everyone in between.
Final verdict
To answer the question at the beginning of the article, we are so happy to announce that thin Mints are indeed vegan!
Both of the different types of Girl Scout Cookies Thin Mints, regardless of the supplier, are happily vegan, with the ingredient list clearly showing that there are no animal products in sight!
As well as this, through our research we also discovered that there were some other flavors of Girl Scout Cookies that were also vegan friendly, meaning your choice is even wider than you originally thought.
So whether you will eat them with a glass of your favorite plant milk, dunked into a coffee, or even straight from the freezer, you can rest assured that you can do so guiltlessly, safe in the knowledge that they are vegan!
We hope that you have found our article very insightful and that you are now feeling so pleased that you can have your favorite cookie from your childhood and still feel sure that you are doing your bit for the animals.
Now, go and find your local Girl Scout as soon as possible and order like, 100 boxes! Go, go, go!
Cassie brings decades of experience to the Kitchen Community. She is a noted chef and avid gardener. Her new book "Healthy Eating Through the Garden" will be released shortly. When not writing or speaking about food and gardens Cassie can be found puttering around farmer's markets and greenhouses looking for the next great idea.
