TREFOIL COOKIES

Spring is Girl Scout Cookie season, and people seem to be very opinionated about their preferences. I am one such person.

They aren’t the most extravagant Girl Scout Cookies, but they’re objectively the best. To quote a passionate user from the Girl Scout Cookie Fandom website message boards, “Trefoils are the distinguished madame of the GSC world.” Strong words from Fandom User 47.148.139.252. 

Trefoils get their name from the Latin Trifolium, meaning three-leafed plant. The symbol of the trefoil is a clover-like emblem comprised of three rings. It’s used in religious contexts, gothic architecture, heraldry, and as informational symbols (recycling, biohazard, fallout shelter). In Girl Scouts, it represents the Girl Scout Promise to help others, serve one’s country, and to follow Girl Scout Law. Trefoils were also the first Girl Scout Cookie back in 1935, when the Girl Scout Federation of Greater New York raised enough money through the sale of commercially baked cookies to buy it’s own die in the shape of a trefoil. The sale of these original cookies became very popular until WWII, when the nation experienced sugar, butter, and flour shortages. Today, Girl Scouts have partnerships with several commercial bakeries around the country in order to produce the cookies at the scale they require. There are three mandatory cookies that these bakeries are contractually obligated to produce, and Trefoils remain one of the three (along with Do-si-dos and Thin Mints).

I will admit, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I tend to be somewhat of a minimalist, and I’m a sucker for shortbread anything, so I suppose I was fated to fall in love with the Trefoil from the beginning.  There’s something flawless in the buttery sweetness, light saltiness, and soft crunch of the humble Trefoil, yet I always get scoffed at when I mention that Trefoils are my favorite Girl Scout Cookie and argue my case on their behalf. It’s a thankless position, but if I end up converting even just one person to the carton of cookies that were always the ones left behind, getting dusty on a pantry shelf or warehouse somewhere, I’ll consider my life complete. ✌

ALEX FINKELSTEIN IS AN EDITOR OF DIGEST MAG.