by Jeanni Ritchie
After judging at the Louisiana Junior Beta Club Convention all week, I was still in full competition mode when my Girl Scouts cookie order came in from Kathy Setliff’s granddaughter.
“Let’s have a tasting competition!” I announced to friends and family, always looking for an excuse to guiltlessly binge on cookies.
After a quick stop at a Girl Scout Cookie Stand outside Kroger’s after church last Sunday to stock up on the flavors that weren’t in my original order, we ended up with nine flavors.
First, a quick history lesson. Girl Scouts owned the trademarks for the names Trefoils and Thin Mints but the Ferrero Group, who operates Little Brownie Bakers, owned the trademarks for the names Tagalongs, Do-Si-Dos, and Samoas. When ABC Bakers also began making Girl Scout cookies, the Girl Scouts had to rename some of their signature cookies, trademarking the names of them along with new iterations of the annual treats.
Most, if not all troops, in Louisiana use ABC Bakers which means some of your favorite cookies in this area have new names and, according to my judges, slightly different tastes. But one thing remains the same: everyone has a different favorite!
I laid out nine flavors on nine different plates, labeling them A-I. I had Lemonades, Peanut Butter Sandwiches (formerly Do-Si-Dos), Trefoils, Peanut Butter Patties (formerly Tagalongs), Adventurefuls, Caramel deLites (formerly Samoas), Thin Mints, Toast-Yays, and Caramel Chocolate Chip.
Three flavors on the 2025 Girl Scout website-S’mores, Lemon-Ups, and Toffeetastic- were not available for judging.
Each judge received a scoresheet and pen, with a column for comments and directions to rank the cookies 1-9 in order of favorite to least favorite.
My 14 judges ranged in age from 12 to 78 and many took their responsibility seriously. Some tasted and judged, a fun Sunday afternoon activity. Others pondered each ranking with thesis-level analysis. My son Cody, the final judge and a self-proclaimed cookie connoisseur, factored in the scent of the cookie as well in his rankings!
I decided to score the cookies by adding the points for each cookie and ordering from smallest sum to largest.
But first I counted how many times each cookie received a #1 vote.
Thin Mints had the most #1s with five votes for the top spot, but it is a definite love it or hate it cookie. It also claimed the #9 spot for three of the judges!
Receiving three #1 votes was the 2021 arrival Toast-Yays. Receiving either one or two #1 votes were Lemonades (also a polarizing flavor), Peanut Butter Sandwiches, Peanut Butter Patties, and Adventurefuls.
Some comments about the flavors:
Cody Goss, about Caramel deLites: Great smell, chewy, great flavors!
Kelsey Puzo, about Toast-Yays: Very good!
Caleb Crochet, about Peanut Butter Sandwiches: Strong peanut butter flavor!
Amanda Larrieu, about Caramel Chocolate Chips: Good, would really be great with coffee!
Hailey Lewis, about Thin Mints: Amazing!
Sherri Steimel, about Tagalongs: Who doesn’t love a peanut butter and chocolate combination?
Sylee Lewis, about Thin Mints: Reminds me of childhood and my grandmother’s freezer. She always had these!
John Ritchie, about Tagalongs: I can’t tell. I think I need two more to be sure!
Kendrick McNulty, about Adventurefuls: Very shocked! I didn’t expect it to be this good!
Emma Steimel, about Thin Mints: Always the best!
Meghan Goss, about Lemonades: Pretty good and I’m not a big fan of lemon!
Patti Goss, about Trefoils: Good and crisp!
But this competition was all about the math so it was time to add. Like a game of mini-golf, the lower the number, the better the score!
Showing just how diverse our taste buds are, the numbers were all over the place. The lowest possible score could’ve been a 14 and yet the cookie receiving the lowest number of points (aka favorite cookie) received a 50!
Likewise, the highest could’ve been a 126 but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and the highest-scoring (aka least favorite) only received 96 points!
Without further ado, the completely biased, unscientific and random first annual Ritchie Girl Scout Cookie Competition results are as follows:
1st Place- Toast-Yays
2nd Place- Lemonades
3rd Place- Peanut Butter Patties
4th Place- Thin Mints
5th Place- Peanut Butter Sandwiches
6th Place- Adventurefuls
7th Place- Trefoils
8th Place- Caramel deLites
9th Place- Caramel Chocolate Chip
Let me know if you want to participate next year. I’ve already created a new scoring system where each judge will award 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ribbons to their top three like they were prize-winning hogs at a county fair. Minus the loquacious spider, of course!!
Jeanni Ritchie is a Central Louisiana journalist and Cat in the Hat wannabe who organizes random rainy day cookie tasting competitions because it’s more fun than playing Up, Up, Up with the Fish! She can be reached at jeanniritchie54@gmail.com.
