Girl Scout Cookie Creations

I'm a sucker for a good cause, especially since in years gone by I was a Junior Girl Scout for a time and had to sell the stupid things. Thankfully in the past few years I haven't been in one place long enough to get asked to buy the cookies for someone's kid. Also I can usually resist the cute girls screaming to buy cookies at the grocery store. Not so this year. I somehow got hit twice and ended up with 4 boxes. Ugh.

So in order to keep the boxes from calling to me from the pantry, I was looking for recipes that use the cookies and found some. Most recipes use Thin Mints, which were part of the original 4 boxes I had but they didn't make it...

The opportunity arose when I was thinking about what to make for International Dinner 2.0. I thought this would be a great way to get rid of the cookies (and not by ME eating them all). So the first recipe I found involved using the crushed cookies as a base for chocolate pudding. Sounded good to me!

Chocolate Cookie Pudding

• 1 (5.9 oz) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 2 cups milk
• 3 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 (8oz) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1 package Trefols Girl Scout Cookies(shortbread), crushed
• 3/4 c sliced almonds

1. Whisk together pudding mix with milk until smooth. Cover and chill for 5 minutes
2. Stir together cream cheese and whipped topping
3. Place 1 cup crushed cookies evenly over bottom of serving bowl. Layer 1/2 of whipped topping mix and 1/2 of the almonds. Then layer all of pudding. Then top with remaining whipped topping, almonds and crushed cookies. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Now the real star is this recipe for Gooey Cookies. These started, ahem, with Thin Mints, but since those are gone, I made a version with Dulce de Leche...yum!!

Gooey Girl Scout Cookie Cake Bars

• 1 Cinnamon Toast Crunch Muffin Mix
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup Caramel Bits
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 1 package Dulce de Leche Girl Scout Cookies, broken into pieces

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, prepare a 9 x 13 in baking pan with cooking spray
2. Place muffin mix, strusel topping, butter and egg into a bowl and mix together with hands until a dough ball forms. Press dough into bottom of prepared pan
3. Top with chocolate chips and caramel bits. Drizzle sweetened condensed milk over top and top with broken cookie pieces. 
4. Bake 30-35 min, until baked through. Once out of oven, take a knife around the edges. Let cool completely then cut into squares.

Deadly!!! I used the muffin mix because that was what I had on hand and I'm in a "clean out the pantry" kind of mood. I really like the idea for this bar and may be experimenting in the future...but for now, thank goodness, the boxes of cookies are gone.

Here's the spread from our dinner:

Fun was had by all and we were all STUFFED!! Will be doing this again in the future.