For over 110 years, the Girl Scouts of the USA have brought young girls together to make friends, learn leadership skills, explore the world, and give back to their communities.
According to the Girl Scouts website, in 1912, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low started Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia. The first-ever Girl Scout troop was made up of 18 trailblazing girls who wanted to live a life of curiosity, adventure, and opportunity—something that wasn’t readily available to American women at that time.
Not even a decade later, Girl Scout troops popped up around the country—and around the world—inspiring thousands of young girls to explore, grow, and learn.
Much like all Boy Scout activities, many of the Girl Scout outings and activities required funding. In 1917, only five years after the first Girl Scouts troop was formed, members of The Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma started baking cookies and selling them in their high school cafeteria.
By 1922, Girl Scout cookie fundraisers were widespread. According to the Girl Scouts website, in a summer 1922 issue of “The American Girl Magazine,” Chicago director Florence E. Neil shared an article that included the recipe for the Girl Scouts’ iconic trefoil shortbread cookies.
Neil estimated the cost of ingredients for six to seven dozen cookies to be 26 to 36 cents. The cookies could then be sold by troops for 25 or 30 cents per dozen, making a profit of 19 to 26 cents per dozen. Cookies were baked at home, packaged in wax paper and bags, and sold door-to-door by the dozen.
More than a century later, the Girl Scouts are still selling cookies for fundraising, now in a myriad of delicious and crave-worthy flavors. So this cookie season, make sure to go out and support your local Girl Scouts troop with an order (or 10) of your favorite Girl Scouts cookies. And if you want a little taste of history, give this vintage recipe a go.
How To Make The First-Ever Official Girl Scouts Cookie
In this clipping of “The American Girl” magazine, Neil writes, “Cookies large and cookies small, made by scouts both short and tall. What’s your order? Phone us quick, so that we may do the trick. Thirty cents is all we ask, and we fit it is no task to deliver to your door, dozens—one, two, three—or more!”
If you’re looking to take a bite out of history, give this historic cookie recipe a go.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, or substitute
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tablespoons baking powder
Directions
Cream butter and sugar, then add beaten eggs, then milk, flavoring, flour and baking powder. Roll them and bake in a quick oven. If you want to make it official-looking, use a trefoil cookie cutter.
Note: A quick oven was a term for a hot oven set at 400 to 450 degrees F, per Tasting Table. There was no time given, so start looking at around 5 to 7 minutes, and go from there.