DIY Girl Scout Cookies Plus Cookie Finder App

It's Girl Scout cookie season and most everybody has some sort of attachment to the addictive boxed treats. Maybe biting into a Thin Mint brings you back to the days you yourself had to walk door to door, reciting your best sales pitch to the crazy cat lady down the street. Maybe you never got to be a Girl Scout but you find yourself still wanting to be a small part of the club. Or possibly, you just love those yummy coconut-caramel Samosas. One box of each of your favorites is never enough. Sometimes finding a booth can be harder than you'd think. Then, before you know it, the sales are over and your cupboards now lack the bright yellow, green and magenta boxes you meant to stock up on. Well, here we offer you a DIY version of each of the popular Girl Scout cookies.

Let's start with the most popular Girl Scout cookie, the Thin Mint. This all-natural, no- shortening recipe comes from 101cookbooks.com. This recipe is a two-part process of making the chocolate wafer cookie from ingredients such as cocoa, flour and powdered sugar. The yummy chocolate coating is simply chocolate melted down with peppermint extract. You want to be sure not to go overboard on the peppermint. Keeping your cookies thin with a less-is-more theory on the melted chocolate coating will ensure your results turn out as close to the real thing as you can get. Want a gluten-free recipe? You can find one here at BakingBites.com.

Here are Lemonades, a take on the shortbread Thanks-a-Lots. These sweet citrus-flavored cookies can be shaped into whatever you wish with your favorite cookie cutter. Mix the flour, sugar, cornstarch, butter and lemon zest, then roll out and cut out your desired shapes. When they've finished baking, simply dust with with some sparkly sugar and tart lemon zest. Here's the recipe from The Family Kitchen from Babble.com.

Here's another chocolate-dipped cookie, only this time it gets real serious with creamy peanut butter! You'll bake a graham recipe for the cookie center. Make a shallow well for the peanut butter by pressing a small bottle into each cookie circle. The best part is once again dipping the cookies in the melted gooey chocolate. Once the chocolate has cooled, grab a glass of milk and enjoy your creamy, peanut-buttery, chocolate-dipped Tagalongs. Here's the recipe and directions from Baker's Royale.

Now for the Samoas, the fancy grown-up Girl Scout cookies with caramel, chocolate and coconut. This recipe starts with baking a similar graham cookie like the Tagalongs, only this time you'll cut out the center like a flat doughnut. Then you're going to toast up some delicious shredded coconut and fold it into warm, melted, caramel candies. You'll then carefully spread the delicious caramel-coconut mixture on your rounded cookie o's. Once again, we get to dip our cookies in chocolate and then drizzle more on top. Now you can enjoy these delights all year long without stocking up the pantry. You can find the recipe and step-by-step process at Ram Shackle Glam.

Oatmeal and peanut butter exist together in a world we all know as Do-Si-Dos and Nutter Butters. You'll combine your buttery cookie ingredients, bake up a batch, and then get ready to Do-Si-Do your cookie halves together. The filling consists of the amazing combo of butter, powdered sugar, peanut butter and heavy whipping cream. Spread this creamy filling on half of your peanut-buttery cookies and then finish off the sandwich with another half. Time to dip these in a tall glass of milk and enjoy. Here's the recipe and guide at Savory Sweet Life.

Here's the Girl Scout cookie bonus section. We found a list of recipes using the boxed Girl Scout snacks as ingredients in recipes far beyond cookies. You'll find a Peanut Thai Chicken dish utilizing Do-See-Dos, Lemon Sorbet Cups from Lemon Chalet Cremes and a Berry Much Bread Pudding made from Thank U Berry Munch Girl Scout cookies. If you get a chance to try any of these recipes out, you'll want to be sure to stock up on Girl Scout cookies before they end their sales in mid-March. Here's the list of recipes from Boulder Weekly.

Maybe you want to skip the baking and just buy the real thing. Go for it, but be sure you score them before they're gone. They'll be available in a neighborhood near you until March 15. Here's a free app for your iPhone to streamline your search if you don't have any Girl Scout neighbors. You can also visit GirlScoutCookies.org and find a list of places and times to find an open cookie booth near you.