Girl Scouts’ pilot project: gluten-free cookies
Delaney Paterno has been in the Girl Scouts for five years, but only this year has she tasted any of the cookies she works so hard to sell.
That’s because she was diagnosed with celiac disease as a toddler, and gluten — found in wheat, barley and rye — makes her sick. But this year, the Girl Scouts are selling one f lavor of gluten-free cookies as a pilot project.
“They’re actually very good,” Delaney, 9, said Sunday by phone from her home in Doylestown, Pa. Her Girl Scout council, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania, is one of 20 councils testing the cookies. Delaney hopes to sell 100 boxes of cookies this year, many of them the new gluten-free ones.
Her mother, Jennifer, also has celiac disease and seconds her daughter’s opinion of the cookies. “My husband says you can’t tell the difference” between these and cookies made with wheat flour, she said.
Girl Scouts in Los Angeles won’t be selling the gluten-free cookies, but those in Or
ange County will. Find the others at http://
lat.ms/1btCf6I.
The new chocolate chip shortbread cookies come in a resealable bag with a photo on the front of a girl rock climbing.
This first year, at least, they’re being sold only at the tables the Scouts set up outside stores, train stations and other high-traffic spots. National Girl Scouts Cookie Weekend kicks off officially Feb. 7, and Orange County Scouts start selling from tables Feb. 16.
“Considering all the food allergies in children and adults, the Girl Scouts asked the company to consider a gluten-free cookie,” said Stewart Goodbody, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. The cookies are made by ABC Bakers in Virginia, one of two companies making the Scouts’ cookies.
Four of the bite-sized cookies, one serving, have 150 calories. They’re made with butter, sugar, rice and tapioca f lour, chocolate chips and other ingredients.
Generally, the Scouts offer one new flavor a year; for most of the 112 councils, that will be a cranberry citrus cookie. The Scouts’ cookie sales are billed as the world’s largest girl-run business, bringing in an estimated $790 million.