Here's another first for the IrrCal Blog: reviewing a newly-introduced flavor of Girl Scout cookie. But seeing as how the Girl Scout "Thin Mint Cookie" has already become a licensed flavor for everything from granola bars and ice cream to Nesquik, Coffeemate and cereal (Honestly...Google it!), I think it is an appropriate fit.
Girl Scouts selling cookies have become a fixture of American culture and are currently the second most popular reason for not answering your doorbell...not far behind Jehovah's Witnesses. Their cookie sales are, of course, the biggest fundraiser they have, and boxed cookies with the Girl Scout logo have been around since the 1930's. Thin Mints are by far their most popular flavor, but they continue to move other recipes in and out of the rotation from time to time.
This year, enter S'mores. Apparently this is an old cookie flavor that has been brought back for their 100th anniversary. (The Girl Scouts are turning 100, not the cookies...although with the amount of preservatives in these things, who knows? But shouldn't the Girls be Great-Grandmother Scouts by now? But I digress...)
For the camping illiterate, S'mores consist of a "sandwich" of graham crackers with toasted marshmallows and a chocolate bar in the middle. Therefore, any snack purporting to be "s'more flavored" needs to approximate those three tastes. Unfortunately, the Girl Scout cookie version does not quite deliver.
Although the filling is certainly colored like chocolate and marshmallow, it tastes just like a chocolate creme with almost no marshmallow taste (and definitely no sticky marshmallow texture). The cookie itself is lighter than a graham cracker in both color and taste. It's not quite the usual shortbread recipe, but it doesn't taste like a graham cracker either. It's somewhere in the middle.
The result is a pleasant chocolate creme cookie that is fine in and of itself, but which doesn't live up to the "S'mores" name. To me, it seemed identical to the Oreo S'mores cookie. Those looking for something more authentic should stick with Mallomars or just make their own with a Honey Maid graham cracker, a Hershey bar, and some miniature marshmallows. You can even microwave one rather than building a campfire...it's not that hard!
RATING: 3/5
UPDATE: I knew that certain Girl Scout cookie flavors were only available in certain regions (looking at you, Lemonades!), but I was unaware that two entirely different cookies might share the same name in different regions. But then I ended up purchasing a box of S'mores from a neighbor which was completely different from one I purchased at work.
I don't know or care if the chicken came before the egg, and likewise I don't know or care which S'mores cookie came first. So, I'll just refer to this one by it's size. Unlike the oval-shaped shortbread-ish cookies I reviewed earlier, this version is a chocolate-covered graham square. The covering makes it a lot messier to eat, without adding anything positive to the taste. Indeed, the "chocolate" is the same thin sheen that covers other Girl Scout cookies and doesn't taste at all like real chocolate. Inside, there is supposed to be a thin layer of "creme"...so thin I neither saw it or tasted it...over a graham cookie. Now, I will say that this tastes more like a graham cracker than the shortbread-ish cookie of the other S'mores, but it's still not quite there.
So, to summarize, the end result is a cookie which doesn't taste like graham, with a supposed creme layer that doesn't taste like marshmallow or anything else, underneath a coating that doesn't taste like chocolate.
As with the prior S'mores cookie, you are better off making your own.
RATING: 2/5
