Let’s start with a moment of gratitude for Wednesday Addams, who forever changed my mental state when Girl Scout cookies come up.
Now, let’s get to the insanity. The tempered insanity. Because, like the mature beings we are, we really did learn our lesson and, until someone pays us to do it or we forget not to do it, we won’t eat loads of cupcakes at once. (And couldn’t really if we’d wanted to, given Trophy Cupcakes doesn’t have every flavour every day…) One week, two trips, four cupcakes.
On their Facebook page, here’s what Trophy tells us about the four flavours they’re promoting this month in honour of Girl Scout cookie sales:
Enjoy these #GirlScoutCookie inspired flavors:
Thin Mint (with a real GS Thin Mint baked in) – M, W & F
Samoas (happy 40th birthday!) – Sun, T, Th & Sat
Dark Chocolate PB (like a Tagalong) – Th & Sat
S’more (inspired by our founder’s time at Girl Scout Camp)- Sun & Mondays
See our reviews below for the details, but do note that Thin Mint was only available until 3/15. We posted a note on our assorted social media outlets to let you know, and we hope you saw and acted on that! (If others have limited availability, it’s not noted on the Trophy site.)
Thanks to Sarah K. for providing us with actual Girl Scout cookies to taste as we ate these cupcakes. We aren’t going to do comparisons based on old memories!
Thin Mint
Chocolate • Mint • Girl Scout Cookie
Everybody loves Girl Scout Cookies — especially in the form of cupcakes! Our Thin Mint cupcake features rich Valrhona chocolate cake with a real Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie baked into the bottom. It’s filled with mint buttercream then hand-dipped in heavenly, minty Belgian chocolate ganache. Available Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays, February 27th through March 15th only!
Days Available: Monday – Wednesday – Friday
Amber: Look at all that lovely mint! I honestly didn’t expect so much…Okay…Let’s start at the top. The chocolate ganache is darker and more dominant than I’d like. I’m pleased there’s a lot of mint flavour over all, but definitely recommend not eating it in a way that the ganache is turned towards your tongue or all you taste is darkness. And not in a sexy vampire way…heh. The cookie doesn’t really seem to add anything…it just sort of disappears into the cupcake. And because it’s sitting under a moist cupcake, it hasn’t even got any crunch. Bummer. Does the cupcake taste like the cookie? Basically, though that chocolate ganache actually makes it taste a little too dark. Remove that and, sure, I’d buy it as the parallel flavour. (However—and I wouldn’t normally make this a competition, but…—I did just try the Cupcake Royale Grasshopper cupcake last week, and I’d take that one over this if I were going for a chocolate mint cupcake. Sorry, Trophy.)
Cat: The Thin Mint cookie definitely feels like the epitome of Girls Scout cookies, right? It’s not necessarily the first, and it’s not necessarily the best, but it feels like the most ubiquitous by far. And it does go down awful smooth—before you know it, you’re left with an empty box of cookies and vague feelings of regret (and joy, of course). That’s because the cookie is crisp and smooth and just dissolves in your mouth like the faintest wisp of magic.
The cupcake, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same effervescent success. I blame the ganache. The ganache made it weird. It’s way too dark, even when offset with the delicious mint cream. If anything, the mint cream becomes lost, falling victim to rich, black flavor. A flavor which, by the by, is so not in the cookie that it’s startling the cake would go that route. Thin Mints aren’t dark cookies! They’re tiny bits of nothing-there light chocolate! The ganache even overshadows the actual cookie in the cupcake. The cookie bottom barely even registers. Uncool, ganache. Way to be an attention whore. Cupcake Royale wins this round.
Chocolate Graham Cracker (aka S’more)
Valrhona Chocolate • Graham Cracker Crust • Toasted Marshmallow
Our S’mores-inspired cupcake was created especially for Martha Stewart when we appeared on her show. It stars rich Valrhona chocolate cake topped with a Hi-Swirl of toasted marshmallow meringue frosting on top of a bittersweet chocolate and graham cracker crust. She called them “utterly delicious!”
Days Available: Sunday – Monday
Amber: I realised, as I pondered making a s’more in order to compare flavours, that I’m not really keen on s’mores. They’re okay, but I far prefer banana boats or just plain old toasted-over-flames marshmallows. If I have s’mores, I’m settling or I’m humouring someone. Also, at best, I find graham crackers to be a barely-positive taste experience (and that’s if they are the sort made with loads of cinnamon sugar or that are actually little sweet biscuits like Teddy Grahams). So, the cupcake already has an advantage here. But I’m going into this dubious. I feel I ought to be honest about my bias before I get all review-y on you. Right. Cupcake.
There’s a lot of marshmallow here…Actually, this cupcake is okay. I feel like the flavours come together well for me and the graham cracker is pretty much sublimated (no significant taste impact, no crunchy or grainy bits), which is a good thing in my book. But the marshmallow…there’s a bit too much of it, which makes the whole thing sweeter than I actually appreciate. I think I’d prefer this as a slice of cake I can eat with a fork (to help with the marshmallow messiness…and, no, I can’t just eat a cupcake with a fork, you heathen!) and, again, less marshmallow. I didn’t think this cupcake was anything special; it was fine but nothing I’d choose over other favourites. That said, I definitely prefer it to an actual s’more.
Cat: Doing a monthly sweets reflection is revealing all my strange texture hang ups. Marshmallows? Definitely fall under the “ughhh” part of that label. I don’t even mind s’mores, but I’m absolutely the kind of person who burns their marshmallow into charcoal and loads up the chocolate. That way, I get way more crunch than your typical fluffy, goopy, weirdly manufactured marshmallow. Which is all to say this cupcake did not do it for me. I dug the chocolate cake, and I really like the graham-y sweetness, but the marshmallow functioned just like the Stay Puft man. It demolished everything, the airy white fluff covering everything with its stickiness and spun sugar taste. Also, it tasted a little like they tried to infuse the marshmallow with smoke flavor? I couldn’t figure out if that came from actually torching those orange lines in, or if it was the same smoke-in-a-bottle from CR’s smoked chocolate. Overall, this thing was strange, all sponge and stickiness and no, thank you.
Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter (aka Tagalong)
Valrhona Chocolate • Peanut Butter • Belgian Chocolate Ganache
It doesn’t get more decadent than this. Our Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake is inspired by the Girl Scouts Tagalong cookie. It features rich Valrhona chocolate cake filled with peanut butter buttercream and dipped in rich Belgian chocolate ganache. To make you swoon, it’s topped off with a sprinkling of chopped salted peanuts.
Days Available: Thursday – Saturday
Amber: First concern here is that the cookie has milk chocolate and the cupcake is dark chocolate. (I’ve never had a Tagalong before. It’s good, but in a cheap way. Comforting like something I would have thought was fancy as a kid.) Fortunately, the ganache on this cupcake isn’t as dark as that on the Thin Mint. But it’s still a little dark and rich in comparison to the cookie it’s meant to parallel. The peanut butter flavour is much subtler than I’d like and certainly subtler than the cookie. Once again, I’d like to posit that the cupcake would be better with more cream. That said, whilst the chocolate isn’t milk enough, the peanut butter evokes the same sphere of taste as that in the cookie. What I can taste of it. But it’s still too lightly flavoured. And, once again, I feel like I’m eating an amped up Hostess cupcake. Is it the ganache? (Reminder: I don’t actually mean anything negative when I compare this to a Hostess cupcake.) Though the salt on top deserves a shout out. That was a nice touch!
Cat: First things first. I’m not a peanut butter girl. I’ll eat it for quick energy, and who am I to turn down a Reese’s, but overall it’s low on my list of sweet indulgences. Which is why this cupcake, this lovely surprise of a cupcake, startled me so much. It was awesome. Need I say more? Sure I do.
I’d also never had a Tagalong (see again: not a fan of PB, especially in desserts), so my first upset was when the cookie turned out better than I’d imagined. I’d never actually purchase it, because Thin Mints and Samoas exist, but I wouldn’t kick it out of the house for showing up unexpectedly. The cookie had that cheap confectioner’s peanut butter that’s weirdly good, maybe because it’s a throwback to second-rate chocolate holiday candy. Whatever. I liked it.
But it made me all the more nervous when we pulled out a dark chocolate cupcake, covered in thick ganache. I feared a Thin Mint situation. I worried that an already unpleasant flavor sensation was about to get worse. I steeled myself to force it down. All that, and so needlessly. First, the ganache wasn’t as dark! Saints be praised! Also, there was no straight peanut butter, it was peanut butter whipped into a cream. Cream is much easier to handle. The cake was topped with peanuts and salt, which rocked my world. Salt and chocolate are born to be together. Salt and me are born to be together. How pleasant, to end up enjoying this cupcake a trillion times more than I expected.
Samoa
Valrhona Chocolate • Caramel • Coconut
Inspired by our all-time favorite Girl Scout cookie, Trophy’s Samoas cupcake starts with a rich Valrhona chocolate cupcake filled with caramel cream. We top it off with dreamy coconut buttercream rolled in toasted coconut and a drizzle of house-made caramel and chocolate ganache. Happy 40th birthday Samoas!
Days Available: Sunday – Tuesday – Thursday – Saturday
Amber: Oh. My. Stars. I haven’t had one of these cookies in years. In spite of the fact that I’m a big mint chocolate fan, this is probably my favourite of the Girl Scout cookies. So, y’know, no pressure, cupcake. (Yes, I remembered the cupcake was the important part.) Now, I don’t want you to die of shock, but I actually think that, for what it’s trying to do, this cupcake has too much cream. We were too excited to remember a cross-section picture, but there’s both the buttercream inside and a massive amount of buttercream on top, under that tasty caramel and coconut. And, as much as I would really like this cupcake (and the cream in satisfying quantities) in another, non-comparison context, that cream is doing a lot to make this less like the cookie. One of the things I love about the cookie is the chewiness and the taste balance. This cupcake needs more of the chew and more of the coconut and caramel (and less of the cream) to be more like the cookie. (Also, a frosting like this but peanut butter-flavoured would have been better for the Tagalong cupcake.) Though the Cupcake Royale Grasshopper cupcake still wins my month, this is really a good cupcake, probably my favourite of the Trophy flavours for this month, Just don’t eat it at the same time as the cookie by which it’s inspired.
Cat: The Samoa cookie is my ultimate, my everything. There is nothing quite as good. It’s the perfect marriage of flavors. It makes coconut taste good, and can convert nearly anyone into a bonafide coconut lover (fact: this cookie is the reason my favorite cake is German chocolate. It opens doors, people). Naturally, this was the cupcake I was most excited for. My first impression? It needed more coconut and caramel. The drizzle with the flakes on the top were the best part, and I think it would have worked better—and been more like the cookie—if those things were closer to the base portion. The frosting is very good, although I didn’t get a huge smack of coconut flavor. It was more like a light caramel-ly cream, more akin to dulce de leche than caramel coconut. And, to echo Amber, there was way too much of it. The chocolate, the delectable caramel and coconut, all fell victim to frosting and unfortunate cookie comparisons. The cookie crunches, it has caramel chewiness, and the crunch and chew were lacking in the cupcake. I think this would have been fine if it was just a monthly special underneath a different name, but once you conflate it with the cookies, those poor cupcakes are just born to lose.
