Now Made With Real Girl Scouts!

Good morning, Kitschies!  I hope you enjoyed your weekend.  Most of mine was spent cleaning up around the house, doing laundry and all that fun kind of stuff.  We did get out of the house for a little bit to celebrate my nephew's 7th birthday.  The boys (the hubs and I) had a lot of fun!  Unfortunately I have to work today (it's President's Day here in the US), but I'm not complaining - at least I have a job.

On to the goodies, shall we?  The hubs and I were doing some cleaning in the kitchen last week and we realized we had an unopened box of Thin Mint cookies hiding out on top of the fridge left over from last year(blasphemy, I know)!  I didn't want to eat the cookies plain because they probably would've been pretty stale, but I had heard somebody mention they've made a Thin Mint cake before and I started on a quest to find said recipe.  Because who wouldn't like them in cake?!  And since Girl Scout cookies will be available starting later *this week* (WOOT!), I thought I'd share this recipe with you now so you can make this awesome cake for yourself!


Thin Mint Cake
1 box Duncan Hines dark chocolate cake mix
1 cup finely chopped (about 1 sleeve of cookies) Thin Mint cookies
1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp Creme de Menthe Liqueur
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup water
Ice with your favorite icing (recipe to follow)

Pre-heat oven to 325*.

Line bottom of cake pan with parchment paper & spray sides of pain with a flour/oil mixture.  Place all wet ingredients in bowl first including eggs, then add cake mix & mix until thoroughly blended.  Add 2/3 cup of the crushed cookies in to the batter.  Pour into the pan(s) and back 40-45 minutes.  Remove from oven and dump cake onto waiting Glad Press 'n Seal wrap (sticky side up).  Wrap the warm cakes tightly and put in the freezer.  You can freeze for as little as 3 1/2 hours but for best results, freeze overnight.  This adds moisture to the cake and straps in the flavors.  After removing from freezer, allow to sit for about 10 minutes.  Mix the remaining cookie crumbs into your favorite icing recipe along with a Tbsp of Creme de Menthe Liqueur.

Chocolate Mint Buttercream Frosting
(for Thin Mint Cake)
6 Tbsp butter
1 cup powdered sugar
4 Tbsp cocoa
2 to 3 Tbsp milk
1/3 cup finely crushed Thin Mint cookies
1 Tbsp Creme de Menthe Liqueur

Cream butter.   Add sugar and cocoa mixture to butter.  Add crushed Thin Mint cookies.  Add milk to butter mixture, starting with 2 Tbsp.  Add Creme de Menthe Liqueur to mixture.  Blend until frosting consistency.

NOTES:  I used Devil's Food cake mix.  There are two kinds of Creme de Menthe liqueur: clear and green.  We used green, but only because it was a couple bucks cheaper.  It says to line the pan with parchment paper, but that's a big pain in the butt, so I spray it liberally with non-stick cooking spray and then dusted with cocoa powder.  No sticking issues.  The recipe calls for the cake to bake 40-45 minutes but in two 9-inch cake rounds, that was WAY too much time - I just followed the time listed on the cake mix box and it turned out perfectly!  I've never made frosting before and was afraid it would be hard to do, but it wasn't.  I doubled the recipe and had just enough for frosting between the layers and to cover the cake.

Looks like some sort of alien concoction.  Oil, eggs and green liqueur.  Yum!

I had an eager little helper!  He did really good until it came time to take the cakes out of the oven...then he lost interest.  LOL

Stir in those cookie crumbs!  He got a little bugged at me that I didn't let him have a cookie.  Poor Natey!

The best part of baking a cake with Mom is getting to lick the scraper!  He got the beaters, too.  If I had eaten that much uncooked batter, I would've gotten a stomach ache.

The middle of each of the cakes was a little sunken, but I leveled them out and they were fine.

Ready for wrapping with the Press 'n Seal - kinda strange, but it worked.  The cake was super moist even though the edges got just a tad over-cooked.

Straight out of the freezer.  Unless you want super cold cake, let it sit out a bit before you serve it.  I didn't mind, and actually, I think I liked it a just a little better when it was still a little frozen.

YUM!!  I want to make another!  Nate doesn't usually eat a whole piece of cake - he'll eat the frosting for sure and *maybe* a bite or two of the actual cake.  He asked for a second piece of this one!

SOOOO GOOD!!  Super moist and super rich.  I saved about half the cake for home and took the rest to work.  Everybody loved it!

Happy Girl Scout cookies!  I hope you try the cake, and if you do, let me know how it came out.