savannah smiles rah rah raisins frozen yogurt

A few weeks ago, I was walking out of my local supermarket when I saw Girl Scouts at a booth selling Girl Scout Cookies! I saw an opportunity to introduce some lesser known Girl Scout Cookies, Savannah Smiles(a lemon shortbread cookie) and Rah Rah Raisins(an oatmeal raisin cookie with the addition of Greek yogurt-covered raisins) to the world by incorporating them in a couple of recipes, like this frozen yogurt recipe.

You might be wondering if I was ever a Girl Scout as a kid. Yes I was, up until age 11. My fondest memory was falling on my butt at an ice rink at a sports center that has since been demolished and replaced by an LA Fitness that I was a member of when I was in college. My troop was doing a Try-It badge about ice skating.

I also remember showing my troop my collection of Beanie Babies when we did a Try-It on collections, building and painting a birdhouse that I still have to this day, and buying fabric from a sewing store for a badge on sewing as a Junior Girl Scout(My mom and I hated that particular badge so much!).

As for my selling skills with regard to Girl Scout Cookies, well, I sucked at it. My only sales channel was my family and my dad's coworkers(who it turns out had daughters or granddaughters who were also selling cookies). This was before you could set up an online store on an Girl Scout app(I was a scout until 2002).

Girl Scout Cookies are so ubiquitous that you can find flavors of the most popular ones in products sold by other companies! Some examples include Breyer's Ice Cream(there's Samoas Ice Cream, Thin Mints Ice Cream, and possibly Tagalongs Ice Cream) and Chewy Granola Bars(flavors are Samoas and Thin Mints).

I love all Girl Scout Cookies- except for one flavor: Thin Mints! Even when paired with chocolate, I still have a disdain for mint flavored food. Frankly, mint should be relegated to toothpaste. I don't like being reminded of toothpaste when I eat a cookie.

It turns out Savannah Smiles cookies were introduced in 2012 and Rah Rah Raisins cookies in 2015.

When I was coming up with this recipe, I knew I wanted to incorporate all the elements of the contents of the cookies, as well as the cookies themselves. I only have one box each of the two flavors of cookies, so I needed some sort of filler for my frozen yogurt.

I chose strawberry Greek yogurt because the color of the box of Rah Rah Raisins was pink, just like this particular yogurt flavor. Although if you wanted to be true with the actual cookie, you could use plain or vanilla yogurt instead. Boring! Also, Rah Rah Raisins don't have cranberries in them, but that was the first thing I grabbed when I was at the supermarket.

When I was making the frozen yogurt, I assembled the ice cream maker the wrong way, with the top of the churning mechanism on the bottom and not the top, where it is intended to go. So it was more difficult to put the contents of the frozen yogurt into the machine. The yogurt wasn't churning so after 11 minutes, I just decided to mix the raisins, Greek yogurt-covered cranberries, and crushed cookies together in a large bowl. Then I just poured the mixture into the ice cream tub and I let it freeze overnight.

Yet I still got the same result as I would've gotten had I not screwed up my assembly of the ice cream maker- a frozen yogurt that may be hard to scoop out(but that was also the case with the Kimchi Ice Cream, when I properly assembled the ice cream maker) but is really delicious. Even my dad liked it and that's saying a lot from him considering his favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla!

You will need:

For the cooking equipment:

A large bowl
Plastic wrap
An ice cream maker(it also can make sorbets and frozen yogurt, so don't get discouraged by the name of this type of machine)
A 1-quart ice cream tub

For the frozen yogurt:

3 cups of strawberry Greek yogurt
3/4 cups of white granulated sugar
1/3 cup of lemon juice
1 tbsp. of lemon zest
1/4 cup of raisins
1/4 cup of Greek yogurt-covered cranberries
4 crushed up Savannah Smiles cookies
4 crushed up Rah Rah Raisins cookies

1. Put the first 4 ingredients in a large bowl and mix everything together so that the juice is distributed evenly among the mixture. Make sure the mixture isn't watery!
2. Cover the large bowl with plastic wrap and let it chill in the fridge for 45 minutes.
3. Assemble your ice cream maker correctly!!!
4. Turn the ice cream maker on and pour the yogurt mixture into the maker. Let it churn for 11 minutes, or according to your ice cream maker's manual.
5. After 11 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients while the ice cream maker is churning(if you assembled your machine correctly).
6. Let the ice cream maker churn for an additional 9 minutes, or according to your ice cream maker's manual.
7. After the 9 minutes, pour and spoon out the frozen yogurt mixture into the ice cream tub.
8. Cover the lid of the ice cream tub and put the tub in the freezer for at least 2 hours or overnight.
9. If the frozen yogurt is too hard to scoop out, let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes to soften it up.
10. Bon appetit!