Girl Scout cookies go by different names in different parts of the United States. Caramel deLites cookies are also known as Samoas. Peanut Butter Patties are known as Tagalongs. Peanut Butter Sandwiches are known as Do-si-dos. Shortbreads are known as Trefoils. The name Thin Mints are shared among the entire United States.
Girl Scout cookies are baked by two companies. One is ABC Bakers, a subsidiary of Interbake Foods (The same family as Hostess) and the second is Little Brownie Bakers, a subsidiary of Keebler (which happens to be owned by Kelloggs).
So if you do the math, then it is obvious the formula will equal Girl Scout cookies all year long. Just head to the grocery store and purchase Keebler's Grasshoppers which are a replica of the GS Thin Mints and Coconut Dreams are the GS Samoas/Caramel deLites.
ABC Bakers Girl Scout Cookie options, notice they are different from LBB
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| Photo Credit: ABC Bakers @ www.abcsmartcookies.com |
Little Brownie Bakers Girl Scout Cookie options, notice they are different from ABC
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| Photo Credit: Little Brownie Bakers @ www.littlebrowniebakers.com |
Both ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers makes their own caramel recipe from scratch for to put in their Samoas & Caramel deLights.
Here is some great information from the Girl Scout Cookie website regarding the history and how the cookies first got started.
Early Years
Girl Scout Cookies had their earliest beginnings in the kitchens and ovens of our girl members, with moms 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, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project.
In July 1922, The American Girl magazine, published by Girl Scout national headquarters, featured an article by Florence E. Neil, a local director in Chicago, Illinois. Miss Neil provided a cookie recipe that had been 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.
References:
Interbake Foods
ABC Bakers
The Press Enterprise Article about the top-selling girl scout:
Girl Scout
Little Brownie Bakers