Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scout cookies have been around almost as long as Girl Scouts. The cookie program teaches decision making, goal setting, money management, pole skills and business ethics.

Girl Scouts began selling homemade cookies in 1917, when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma baked and sold cookies in its high school cafeteria as a service project. This was intended to give girls experience making and selling cookies, as well as to generate funds for Girl Scout activities.

Scout cooking was a hot area - the 1918 book Camp Cookery: A cookery and Equipment Handbook for Boy Scouts and Other Campers by Ava B. Milan, A. Grace Johnson, and Ruth McNary Smith contained a recipe for rolled oat cookies which were to be baked on a grill over an open fire.

By the 1920s as troops shared recipes and ideas, some local council began engaging commercial bakers to produce and package the cookies as fundraisers for their Scout troops. Soon troops were competing in cookies sales in local regions.

As the idea caught on, national headquarters sought to regulate and regularize this fundraising possibility. By 1936 the national Girl Scout organization began licensing bakers to produce cookies. The following year, many Girl Scouts Council sponsored cookie sales.

In 1951, three flavors were sold: Sandwich, Shortbread and Chocolate Mints. Concerns for the nutritional content of Girl Scouts cookies became an important issue during the 1990s. As a result, new low-fat and sugar-free cookies became available.
Girl Scout Cookies