A 1922 recipe for Girl Scout cookies

For the Cookie Connection badge, we are learning about Girl Scout cookies. GSUSA has a brief history of this popular fund-raising project, and a recipe for one of the first cookies, which the girls baked themselves!

"The sale of cookies as a way to finance troop activities began as early as 1917, five years after Juliette Gordon Low started Girl Scouting in the United States. The earliest mention of a cookie sale found to date was that of the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which baked cookies and sold them in its high school cafeteria as a service project in December 1917.

In July 1922, The American Girl magazine, published by Girl Scout national headquarters, featured an article by Florence E. Neil, a local director in Chicago, Illinois. Miss Neil provided a cookie recipe that was given to the council's 2,000 Girl Scouts. She estimated the approximate cost of ingredients for six- to seven-dozen cookies to be 26 to 36 cents. The cookies, she suggested, could be sold by troops for 25 or 30 cents per dozen.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Girl Scouts in different parts of the country continued to bake their own simple sugar cookies with their mothers. These cookies were packaged in wax paper bags, sealed with a sticker, and sold door to door for 25 to 35 cents per dozen."

We found the dough to be rather soft and difficult to manage in our warm kitchen, and so it was easier to roll the dough into balls 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter (the size of a golf ball or large walnut) and stamp each ball with the bottom of a glass dipped in white sugar.

1922 Girl Scout Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar, plus more for topping (optional)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Cream butter and 1 cup sugar. In another bowl, beat the eggs lightly. Add eggs to butter mixture; add milk, vanilla, flour, salt, and baking powder, and mix well. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Roll dough, cut into trefoil shapes, and sprinkle sugar on top, if desired.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown.

Makes 6-7 dozen cookies.

Making polymers

A polymer is any of numerous chemical compounds of usually high molecular weight consisting of up to millions of repeated linked units, each a relatively light and simple molecule. Some polymers occur in nature, and some are synthetic (man-made). Polymers have extremely varied and versatile uses in industry, such as in making plastics, concrete, glass, and rubber.

Different kinds of polymers will have different properties -- rubberiness, strength, bounce, stickiness, viscosity, and so on. The different ingredients you use in the following experiments demonstrate some of these characteristics.

This activity is adapted from the "Making it Matter" badge in the Junior Girl Scout Badge Book (c2001).

Polymers

You will need:

borax
water
white glue
salt
sugar
baking powder
coarse corn meal

1 tablespoon (2 or more) and 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoons
1-cup liquid measuring cup

plastic cups (5 per polymer; the girls can share if necessary)
plastic spoons

Make a basic polymer: Measure 1/2 cup water into a plastic cup. Dissolve 1 tablespoon of borax in the water. This solution should be enough for 8 polymer mixtures (8 tablespoons in 1/2 cup). In another cup, put 1 tablespoon of white glue and 1 tablespoon of water; stir well. Add 1 tablespoon of the borax solution and stir. What happens?

Some variations on the basic polymer: Make sure that you have enough borax solution and cups for 4 polymer variations.

In a plastic cup, put 1 tablespoon of white glue and 1 tablespoon of water; stir well. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and stir until the salt is dissolved. Now add 1 tablespoon of the borax solution and stir. What happens?

Try this again using sugar, baking powder, OR corn meal instead of salt. How do the polymers compare?

Be sure to dispose of the polymers properly (not in the sink!), and wash all of the utensils well after you have finished.

Learn much more about polymers here at the University of Southern Mississippi's Polymer Science Learning Center.