'Tis the season, no not THAT season, it's Girl Scout Cookies season! I received my boxes of Thin Mints from my tiny 8-year-old dealer yesterday and, admittedly, I plowed through nearly an entire sleeve in one sitting. (No regrets, btw)

Never having been a scout myself I wondered about the origins of the coveted cookies as I continued to pull cookie after cookie out of the shiny silver packaging.

Turns out, the iconic cookies got their start in 1917 when girls would make their own cookies to sell to raise money for troop activities. A few years later, one of the Girl Scouts directors, Florence E. Neil, published a recipe for cookies that the girls could make to sell. According to the Girl Scouts website, "[Neil] 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." She went on to publish the recipe:

1 cup of butter, or substitute
1 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons of milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
Cream butter and sugar; add well-beaten eggs, then milk, flavoring, flour, and baking powder. Roll thin and bake in quick oven. (Sprinkle sugar on top.)

This amount makes six to seven dozen.

The website does add a modern-day tip which was not part of the originally published recipe, "Refrigerate batter for at least one hour before rolling and cutting cookies. Bake in a quick oven (375°) for approximately 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges begin to brown."

So once you're done devouring every last box you've accumulated, try your hand at making some and being an OG Girl Scout!

More From Kool AM