The BEST Thin Mints (V/GF)

I never review recipes, but every once in a while something is EXTRAORDINARY and I am morally obligated to tell other people. Here’s your recipe, folks. If you’re gluten free and have been missing Thin Mints for over a decade, wait no longer. If you simply love Thin Mints, but want a slightly healthier version, you’ve found it. These are suspiciously close to the “real” deal. (note: I did use vegan butter- Earth Balance- instead of refined coconut oil because that’s what I had). Doubled the recipe, and got 28 cookies.

Yo! Just came here to say I made these with vegan butter instead of the coconut oil and they turned out great! I realized my coconut oil was unrefined when I got back, and chose to take the risk over having these taste like coconut.

So so good! I used cornstarch instead of tapioca starch, and it was just amazing. My family ate them up in one sitting!

These worked well and got great reviews! I froze the dough as a log and sliced it to make the cookies…not as round or as uniform as rolling and cutting but quicker and less fussy, and the chocolate coating helps to smooth the edges in the finished product! Preparing them in this way, I got 2 dozen cookies per batch.

Absolutely amazing recipe. I’ve made this a ton of times now. My partner’s dad, who never asks for /anything/ from /anyone/ asked for me to make him a batch this coming Christmas after I brought some over to try.

I don’t have a food processor so I just make sure to sift the ingredients so that they’re not clumped up and easy to mix. I also prefer if the coconut oil is melty or even outright melted before I put it in the dry ingredients. I have to refrigerate it for quite awhile after, but without a food processor this seems to be the best way to avoid clumps of coconut oil.

Seeing that other people have had trouble with the chocolate seizing, I make sure to pour the (alcohol-based) peppermint extract into the chocolate in very small amounts at a time. It takes awhile but I’ve never had the chocolate seize.

I find a 1.5x batch of chocolate coating goes perfectly for a 2x batch of cookie dough. YMMV.

Ding, ding, ding!

I made this tonight and it was so delish! They were devoured in no time!

Thanks for another home run!

Oh my gosh. These were AMAZING!!! Better than the real deal, seriously!!

These are some of the best cookies I’ve had ! They were so delicious and minty and easy to make! I wanted a quick and easy recipe that didn’t have to many ingredients and this was perfect! Thanks

Amazing! I’ve made a few times and I find using parchment paper on top and underneath the dough makes it easiest to roll out. Otherwise, it’s hard to work with. I’m not much of a baker so it could just be me!

I have picked up on baking quite a bit the past 2 years, but my husband asked me if I bake vegan and my answer was NO! Yesterday, I tried making a vegan thin mint recipe from another blogger and it was TERRIBLE! I came across this recipe and had to try it! With a ton of skepticism, I tried it… and BOY was a wrong. This recipe is AMAZING! The texture and flavor is spot on! Thank you for sharing this amazing recipe and making me a little less terrified of vegan baking hee hee!

These were incredible in every way. As soon as I saw the picture and the name, I knew I needed to make them ASAP. I love mint and I love Girl Guide cookies. They were so fast and easy. I did not change or sub anything, but I could only find unrefined coconut oil at the shop, which did not seem to matter. For chocolate, I used Pana’s dark baking chocolate because I try to avoid processed white sugar and they use coconut sugar. The only difficulty was to roll the dough out, it was fine at first, but after the coconut oil warmed up from handling, the dough stuck to the rolling pin and cracked apart, no mater how much tapioca flour I used. I ended up just pressing it with my fingers, which was fine. I think this could be avoided if I chilled it longer than 15 mins and worked faster. I even used a spice jar lid as a cookie cutter – great idea, perfect size. The process of dipping in the chocolate was so fun and I felt like a culinary goddess. We tried one once the chocolate set, but I must say they were better the next day after refridgerating overnight. SO YUMMY. I also love that they are vegan and gluten free so I can share them with friends and not worry about dietary restrictions!

These are amazing! The recipe was easy too! I had a hard time rolling the dough out so I just flattened it out with my hand and it worked fine. Husband loved them, will be making these regularly!

Ahhh-mazing! These thin mints are incredibly easy to make. The amount of peppermint was perfect too. Well done!

These are so delicious and taste like the real deal—especially for being vegan and gluten free. The amount of peppermint extract is perfect. They are not too sweet and have very little added sugar. Healthy alternative to the classic Girl Scout cookie☺️

These are so delicious and pretty easy. My baking companion (7) was antsy, so we skipped the chilling and rolling out part and just rolled in our hands and squished into mostly even small patties. Because mine were smaller, I baked for 7 minutes and it worked great. The dipping was a little labor intensive but well worth it! Thanks for a great recipe! Oh…and I highly recommend making a double batch!

So easy, so good. You’re a genius!

SPOT. ON. Thank you, thank you for such a delicious recipe. So simple to make and the flavor was exactly that of a thin mint cookie. I was skeptical. When I told my family they were vegan and gluten free, I got the usual eye roll and a comment of “Oh great. That means there is going to be something gross in them.” HA! Not this time. They were fantastic and will be a regular in our house going forward.

Thanks for this wonderful recipe! I made these and they are in the refrigerator cooling. They are delicious. I ate one before I put them in there. I pretty much followed your recipe but used arrowroot instead of tapioca. I only used 1 TB oil in the chocolate coating. Next time I will leave it out if I can and also use water in the cookie recipe instead of oil because I saw someone said that worked for them. I will probably try bittersweet chocolate next time for the chips just because I like darker chocolate flavor. I did leave them in the oven a little longer than 10 minutes.

Such a delicious recipe! I had a bit of leftover dough and made little “truffles” with them, raw! Rolled them into balls and then dipped them in the leftover chocolate. Super yummy, too.

YES! Truly the best thin mints ever. I have made these 3 times already and they are always a hit! So delicious and easy to follow! Thank you!

They turned out great! Thanks so much! Subbed arrowroot and worked perfectly :)

Well, I finished up the banana shortbread cookies yesterday, so I made these today. I feel so fancy. These are absolutely delicious. Thank you so much for your excellent instructions and for your continued work to help us make good stuff! Now my only problem is which cookie I’m going to try next??? Tagalongs? Samoas? So many cookies, so little time! Guess I’ll just enjoy these before deciding. :-)

Oh my goodness these cookies have become a staple in my household. Absolute perfection. My husband is addicted, and typically tries to limit himself to three a day!

This recipe should really be called “How to make yourself feel like a gourmet pastry chef” because wow. Admittedly intimidated to try this recipe, it was so clear and precise that any feeling of complexity fell away to pure enjoyment.

Oh, and they’re out of this world delicious. Thank you for upping that childhood dream taste!

Delish! Great flavor profile and definitely fulfilled all my mint chocolate cravings!!

Ok, I was sceptical. But these are the real deal. You need to multiply this recipe immediately, 14 of these is not enough. I will make these again!

Uh-mazinggggg! These turned out so delicious and just like the girl scout cookies just without the guilt. These were such a hit with my family. Thank you for this easy and memory favorite recipe! I’ll be making these again soon.

Yum!!! My chocolate was also too thick to dip the cookies, and after trying a few approaches, I wound up grabbing a knife and spreading the chocolate on each side of the cookie. Success! Very fun to make on a rainy day. I used Trader Joe’s chocolate chips, so I thought perhaps the chocolate was the issue…

I’m speechless. You. Nailed. It.

I used 10 drops of Doterra peppermint oil instead of extract in the dough. And only one drop in the chocolate coating. Perfection.

Dana, I just want to say THANK YOU. You are the most reliable food blog and recipe developer I know on the whole World Wide Web, especially for healthy cooking and that accommodates for every dietary need. Your website is the most user-friendly I have ever found to date. You have made it so simple and all the features are so well thought out.

We got invited over for a dinner gathering tonight with friends who have dietary restrictions and I offered to bring a dessert. Then I realized that I don’t know very many recipes for sweet treats that are gluten and dietary free. I tested two recipes from other sites and food bloggers after scrolling for three hours! I landed on them because they seemed simple enough with ingredients I had on hand. Unfortunately, BOTH were a complete flop! I was disappointed and couldn’t understand how people call themselves “food bloggers” and “recipe developers” but have not put excellence into their work, though this is their “so-called” job, and yet still have hundreds of thousands of followers! Truly, I don’t get it! Many of them are so compromised for followers, that though their emphasis should be on creating GOOD food, most of their posts are about THEMselves, what they wear and their skin routine. There’s a purity about you in your work that I admire and respect and I know I can trust. It’s even in the way you put yourself out there – in your respectful communication, in the way you dress and present yourself…all these things matter because they have such influence on those who are watching.

When you put out a recipe out there for the world to see and create, you take it very seriously and I KNOW you have tested it several times. I am continually frustrated that many recipes on other “healthy” sites are done carelessly. I spend resources and so much time and energy to discover that energy and money has been wasted on something that is a flop. But I have NOT been disappointed with one of your creations. Thank you for the excellence you put into your work and for your consistency. Truly, I have come to realize how hard that is to come by these days. And thank you for not being a sellout, Dana.

Oh yes, and this recipe, like ALL of your others, was AMAZING!!! Just perfection.

God bless!

Even better than the real thing!!! Have made them 3 times in one week.

These were a HUGE hit!!! Shared them with some friends and they agreed. Thanks again!!!

My issues are similar to other peoples comments. Addition of the peppermint made the chocolate get hard. Heating it (on low) made it start to burn and form into a dull ball. I am a very proficient baker and had an inkling this might happen. Also I made my cookies different sizes. Larger ones took a couple seconds longer to dip and coat and they absorbed too much wetness and started to fall apart. Keep them on the smaller size and will go better. Made a lot of sandwich cookies instead since the chocolate wasn’t very dip able consistency.
Tastes great, not pretty!

All was well until I added the peppermint extract to the melted chocolate mixture. The chocolate mixture got extremely thick really quickly. I tried to save it by adding more coconut oil and slowly warming it up again but I had to throw away that batch as it was unrecoverable. I made a second batch of chocolate and the same thing happened… I didn’t want to waste the second batch so I just spread some of the thick chocolate over the cookies. I noticed another reviewer had a similar issue. I followed the recipe to a T so I don’t know what the issue was!

These turned out great! I would make the cookies thicker next time (at least 1/4 inch thickness), they need a higher cookie:chocolate ratio.

These were sooooooo good. My super picky kids even loved them. Thank you, Dana!!

I made these last night to rave reviews from my partner in life and vegan cooking.
I followed the recipe precisely, and have one tip.
The dough was a bit sticky when I rolled it out, so I put a second layer of parchment paper on top of the disc and rolled it out between the two. Worked great.
Also I think my cookies were mostly slightly thinner than the eighth inch suggested, since I was eyeballing it. We both liked them thinner, as they had that great “snap.”
Thanks for the recipe, these cookies are super good and will be made again!

Thank you for creating this recipe. We have an almond allergy in our home and after reading your responses, we decided to grind up some cashews as a replacement. They turned out wonderful and will become a go-to treat in our home!

This recipe is easy and tastes fantastic! My mom and boyfriend loved them! Very much like the chocolate mint girl scout cookies I used to love as a child! Keep up the great work!~

Great recipe. Turned out so much like the original crunchy and crumbly on the inside and covered in delicious chocolate. And very easy to make. Will be making again.

Super delicious! I often adapt recipes on here that are gf or df to include the gluten-filled or dairy ingredients, but in this case, I stuck to the script (subbed cornstarch for the tapioca starch, though). Turned out just like the real thing! My coconut oil neither says refined nor unrefined (don’t usually bake with it so I’m not used to looking for that) and once baked, I didn’t taste any coconut. I will say that after accidentally adding what seemed like entirely too much extract to the chocolate coating, the flavor was spot-on. The chocolate does melt faster outside of the fridge than if I had used the correct amount of extract, but I think it’s difficult to actually mess these up.
One note: I live in Japan and have a very small oven, so I always need to bake at much lower temps and for a shorter time than recipes describe (i.e. I have to bake at 160 C instead of the described 176 C in this one and only for 5-6 min). To get the really “snappy” texture of the cookie, be sure to bake a little longer than you think if you’re in a situation similar to mine!

These are amazing! Thank you!

WOW! Just WOW! These came out better than store bought thin mints! making them again today! absolutely delicious! Will be on rotation for sure!

Oh my goodness. Dare I say these taste even better than Thin Mints, one of my favorite cookies? And with a fraction of the original cookie’s sweetness. Simple to make, delicious out of the fridge and a hit in my house. Can I request a Minimalist Baker’s version of Samoas next?

So yummy and easy to make! The texture is great and isn’t overly sweet. I didn’t have tapioca starch so substituted with arrowroot and it was great! I can’t wait to try one frozen too… it’s hard to not eat them all!

These were super easy to make and so delicious! I put them in the freezer but I still can’t stop snacking on them.

I made these today and they are so good! I didn’t have peppermint extract but used peppermint essential oil (consumption grade quality). I have made several of your recipes and have loved every single one! On repeat several times over (and also made today) is your Quinoa Taco Meat. Thanks again, Dana, for sharing your tried and true creations! Keep them coming!

I absolutely loved this recipe. Yet again simplicity and deliciousness put together. My only issue was that when i rolled the dough it was kind of dry and cracking. Was it too cold? (i left it an hour). Did i not measure the coconut oil well enough??? It wasn’t a big deal though, i just kneeded the cut up circles back together and once cooked i was careful and used a tablespoon to dip them in. Will definitely make this again!!!

These are great. Made them exactly as written. Next time I’d leave them in the oven an extra 1 or 2 minutes (I took them out at 8 minutes) because they don’t have that thin mint snap. But the flavor is right on, and I think I just took them out a little early.

I made this recipe last night. There are very few left. My husband who has no dietary issues (so “normal” tastebuds intact) said these taste just like girl scout thin mints! I LOVE THEM. I am not the best baker, I have a small attention span for measuring accurately. I think I put a touch too much coconut oil in as mine are pretty melty on the outside quickly when taken out of the fridge. I put them in the freezer which somehow made them even more delicious.
Fantastic recipe!!! Definitely a recipe I would make for other people.

Just subbed tapioca flour for arrowroot, and wow! Everyone loved them! Yet another minimalist baker win :)

Made these yesterday for my thin-mint-loving-valentine! He thought they were REALLY good, and so did I! I had to use virgin coconut oil and corn starch, as this was a last-minute baking decision, but they came out wonderfully! Thanks!!

These are unreal. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this recipe. I have gluten, dairy and soy intolerances and NEVER thought I’d be able to have thin mints again. When you say these tastes just like the real thing, it is no joke – texture is even spot on! I have been eating these directly from the freezer, which is how I used to eat traditional GS cookies. I made the recipe as written. I didn’t have a rolling pin or cookie cutter, so I used my hands and a spice cap. I was able to get 29 cookies. Again, thank you!!!!!!

One of the best recipes I’ve ever made! These taste just like the real deal…but even better. They were a a little consuming, but fun to make. The dough came together perfectly in a food processor, but rolling the dough out was a bit challenging, even after some time in the fridge. I used unrefined coconut oil and in the end, didn’t seem like the flavor was impacted. The amount of peppermint was spot on and I will be making these again. They were a huge hit!

I never post comments, but have to for these. I made them for Valentines and gave to friends! They are easy, but look impressive and taste delicious!

I follow your blog and have always been happy with what I make. Thank you!

I loved thin mint girl scout cookies growing up (and as an adult) but since being gluten intolerant that treat has been few and far between. Store bought GF versions never really did the trick. This recipe is easy to make and soooo good! The cookies (in my opinion) are best after being frozen for a bit . Thanks for bringing me back some childhood goodness. 😋

When I added the peppermint extract to the dipping chocolate, the chocolate thickened quickly and I had to warm it up again and add more coconut oil to smooth it out. Did it thicken because the chocolate wasn’t warm enough? Other than that, they were easy to make and delicious! I’d make them again.

Oh my goodness, these are delicious. I followed the recipe as is and they are amazing. My husband thought I had bought the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies!

As soon as I saw this recipe, I knew I had to make it and it did not disappoint – so easy and delicious! I had a bit of trouble getting my chocolate chips to melt, so I added a little bit a liquid which worked fine. Also I used butter instead of coconut oil and had no problems. These will disappear from the fridge very fast!

Just made these and they are chilling in the fridge now! Pretty easy, except the melted chocolate wasn’t runny (maybe I stirred for too long or let get cool while stirring for too long? I was still able to coat the cookies and I think it’ll be a totally perfect amount of chocolate coating. Can’t wait to eat them! I loved Girl Scout thin mints growing up.

Thanks for another great recipe!

I made these with All Purpose flour today. I started with 1/2 cup instead of 3/4 but the mixture was far too dry. Added an extra 1 tbsp of coconut oil, 1 tbsp of water, and 1 tbsp of maple syrup and it seemed OK. Tasted great!

If you’re experimenting with All purpose flour, I’d try less than 1/2.

These are so addicting… I used canola oil in the cookie dough since I didn’t want the coconut flavor to come through (didn’t have any refined on me, only virgin), but decided to risk it and put the virgin coconut oil in the melted chocolate since it holds up so well when chilled. Don’t taste the coconut at all! Really tasty and I got a few more than 14 cuts out of my dough, too.

Just made these as per recipe except I used peppermint essential oil. 4 drops in cookies and 3 in chocolate coating. These are so easy and delicious! Thanks!

Perfect, perfect, perfect! I ended up putting the ingredients in a Nutribullet bc I didn’t feel like taking the food processor out, and while a little messy at first, it still worked! The cookies got the perfect bite and held up for chocolate dipping. Great cookie.

I’m so happy to have these and to share them, thank you for the recipe ❤️

I made these and they are magical! I forgot the baking soda?!?! But it didn’t seem to matter. I cut them out as hearts for valentines day! Thanks for your always amazing recipes ❤️