Girl Scout Toffee-Tastic Cookies Recipe

Toffee-tastic is the gluten-free Girl Scout cookie: a crisp butter cookie made from rice flour, with toffee bits baked in and no egg. This copy creams half a cup of butter with half a cup of sugar, adds rice flour, tapioca starch and half a cup of toffee bits, and bakes thirty small cookies at 325°F for about 14 minutes.

What Toffee-tastic cookies are

Girl Scouts of the USA describes them as "rich, buttery cookies with sweet, crunchy toffee bits", gluten-free and made by Little Brownie Bakers. The baker's ingredient list begins with rice flour, tapioca starch, sugar and butter, followed by palm oil, brown rice flour and butter toffee bits. There is no egg in it. Two cookies weigh 28 grams and have 140 calories.

That list is the recipe in outline: a shortbread-style dough on rice flour and tapioca starch, held together by xanthan gum instead of gluten. This is a reconstruction; MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Girl Scouts of the USA or Little Brownie Bakers.

Recipe

Girl Scout Toffee-tastic Cookies

A reconstruction of Girl Scout Toffee-tastic cookies — crisp, gluten-free butter cookies made from rice flour and tapioca starch with toffee bits, and no egg. Thirty cookies.

3.9 (11)Print

Prep

20 min

Cook

15 min

Total

1 hr 5 min

Serves

30

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups white rice flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca starch
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup toffee bits

Instructions

1. Whisk the rice flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum, baking soda and salt together.
2. Beat the butter and the sugar until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the milk and the vanilla.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until the dough comes together; it looks crumbly first and then clumps. Mix in the toffee bits.
4. Wrap the dough and chill it for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 325°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
5. Roll the dough into 30 balls of about 2 teaspoons each, set them 2 inches apart and press each one flat to 1/4 inch with the bottom of a glass.
6. Bake for 13 to 15 minutes, until the edges are golden. The cookies are fragile while hot: leave them on the sheet for 10 minutes before moving them to a rack.

Nutrition

Calories:

85

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Why the Toffee-tastic copy has no egg

The original has none. A butter cookie without egg bakes crisp and sandy, like shortbread; with egg it turns soft and cakey. The tablespoon of milk is only there to help a gluten-free dough come together.

The Girl Scout Trefoils are the wheat-flour shortbread in the same range, for a kitchen where gluten is not a concern.

Rice flour, tapioca and xanthan gum

• White rice flour is the base, as in the original. A fine grind gives a smooth cookie; coarse rice flour bakes gritty.
• Tapioca starch makes the dough less crumbly. Cornstarch can replace it.
• Xanthan gum does the job gluten would do and keeps the cookies from falling apart. If a flour blend already contains it, leave it out.
• A ready-made gluten-free blend: use 1 1/2 cups in place of the rice flour and the tapioca starch.
• Wheat flour: 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour and no xanthan gum make the same cookie, but it is no longer gluten-free.

Toffee bits and gluten

Plain toffee bits are sugar and butter, but some brands add almonds, and not every brand is made in a gluten-free facility. For a cookie that has to be gluten-free, the label on the toffee decides, not the recipe.

Keeping them

In a tin at room temperature for a week; they stay crisp. The dough freezes for two months rolled into balls. Bake them from frozen and add 2 minutes.

Other Girl Scout cookies on this site are the Thin Mints and the Caramel Delight cookies.