PITTSBURGH — Seeing packs of young girls congregating in front of supermarkets, flanked by brightly colored boxes, can only mean one thing.
It’s Girl Scout cookie season.
And the news for this year’s cookie sale is that the ever-popular Thin Mints are now certified kosher pareve by the Orthodox Union.
All varieties of Girl Scout cookies have been certified kosher-dairy for years. But Little Brownie Bakers, the company that supplies the Girl Scouts with their wares, has changed its recipe to remove dairy products from Thin Mints. They’re neither dairy nor meat.
“I was surprised to find out they were pareve, cause we eat a lot of that stuff,” said Pittsburgh resident Macy Kisilinsky. “Now, on Friday nights after a meat meal, we can have Thin Mints for dessert. I have four daughters, and we buy a lot of chocolate.”
The Kisilinskys are so passionate about pareve chocolate that four years ago they shelled out more than $650 for six cases of Trader Joe’s pareve chocolate chips after the news hit that the morsels would be changing over to dairy.
“We like the Thin Mints,” Kisilinsky said. “Now, if only they could make them for Pesach, it would be great.”
The cookies received their pareve certification after whey, a dairy product, was removed, and a flavor that contained dairy was replaced with a nondairy flavor.
“The cookie taste and texture are unaffected,” according to the Little Brownie Bakers website.
There is still “a small supply” of Thin Mint boxes that are labeled kosher-dairy, according to Little Brownie Bakers, but the cookies are nonetheless vegan and made without animal-derived products.
“Girl Scouts recognizes that there are millions of people with dietary restrictions, and we wanted to ensure that all customers could enjoy our delicious treats,” said a Girl Scouts of the USA spokesperson. “Our bakers have produced a variety of cookies that take lifestyle changes and dietary restrictions into account, including gluten-free, vegan and kosher options.”
For Pittsburgh resident Dan Butler, the pareve designation on the Thin Mints is a “big deal because it increases the window of time the cookies can be utilized, including as part of a meat meal.”
The Girl Scouts could do more as far as Butler is concerned.
“It would mean a lot more to me spiritually if the Samoas were pareve,” he said
This only applies to thin mints from Little Brownie Bakers, not those from ABC Bakers. The difference is that the LBB thin mints have a smooth edge, while the ABC Bakers thin mints are slightly scalloped.