Texas Chocolate Crackles!

 

Did I mention that World Thinking Day is just around the corner?  It's an annual day for girl scouts and girl guides to celebrate the unique connection they have with girls all around the world through scouting.   How awesome is that?!  Our service unit commemorates the day with an 'Around the World' event that allows girl scouts to 'visit' other countries (hostessed by other troops) and learn a little about the geography, language, culture, food and scouting of course!

 

A small sample of food from your country is expected to be served at your booth.   Last year we had Mexico as our country and a local restaurant donated chips and Spanish rice, but the girls wanted to serve something sweet this year, so no chance to hit up Outback Steakhouse for something 'on he barbie' - ha!  We also had a couple of connections in 'the land down under' who were willing to send us some Girl Guide 'Biscuits' but the shipping turned out to be prohibitive.  So, after scouring several library books and more than a couple of websites, we settled on THESE delicious Australian confections!

 

 

Aussie Chocolate Crackles

(a.k.a. Chocolate Bubble Cakes)

• Icing sugar -- 1 cup
• Cocoa powder -- 1/2 to 2/3 cup
• Rice bubbles -- 4 cups
• Unsweetened coconut, dried and shredded -- 1 cup
• Copha -- 10 ounces, or about 1 1/4 cups
• Hundreds and Thousands

Sift together the icing sugar and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Stir in the rice bubbles and dried coconut.  Melt the coconut oil in a small saucepan over low flame. Stir the dry ingredients into coconut oil until well mixed.  Scoop small portions of the crackle mix into paper muffin cups.  Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands.  Chill in the refrigerator until firm and serve.

The girls and I had lots of fun figuring out what all the ingredients were here in the States, and I had to make a few adjustments after seeing the price of coconut oil, so here's the recipe again with our 'Texas substi-Two-tions'!  They are easy and fun to make so give 'em a go mate!

Texas Chocolate Crackles 

• 1 C powdered sugar
• 2/3 C cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa because it's what I had on hand)
• 4 C Rice Krispies cereal
• 1 1/4 C Butter-flavored Crisco
• 1-2 tsp. coconut extract
• Sprinkles for garnish

Add dry ingredients to a large bowl and toss together.   Heat Crisco in microwave for about 1 minute or until just melted.  Pour over dry ingredients.  Add coconut extract and mix until all cereal is well coated with chocolate.  Use small melon baller to scoop cereal into mounds and drop into mini-muffin cups.  Top with sprinkles and let cool completely.  Enjoy!

Makes 48 mini muffin treats

Even though World Thinking Day is February 22nd, we'll be celebrating this weekend - yum!

 

What does your troop or service unit for Thinking Day?

 

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Bienvenidos a Mexico!

Last night our Girl Scout Service Unit celebrated Thinking Day at one of the local churches in town.  In case you haven't heard of World Thinking Day before, or don't remember it from your own girl scout days (Don't worry - I didn't either!!), Thinking Day is officially February 22 and is a day for girl scouts to "participate in activities with a global theme to remember their sister girl scouts and girl guides in other countries."


Each troop within our service unit was asked to pick a country that has girl scouts or girl guides and learn some things about that country that they could share with the other troops.  Booths were set up in the church hall and while half of the girls rotated around the booths with 'passports' that could be stamped at each country they visited, the other half acted as hostesses for the country we chose - sharing food, swaps and cool facts about the country.  Once the first group visited every country, then they switched groups so that all the girls had a chance to visit and to hostess.  The world tour was followed by performances or demonstrations (a song, a game, etc.) by each of the troops.

As a troop, we are very fortunate to have access to individuals and artifacts from many countries:  Italy, England, Mexico, Japan, Colombia and Canada!  We ended up hosting Mexico for our first ever Thinking Day and had only two meetings to prepare!  We are also in the midst of the 'Between the Earth and Sky' Journey, so were were desperate to find a way to combine our Journey with our Thinking Day preparations!  So, my co-leader and I spent and evening with some wine and the computer and voila!

We decided to focus on Monarch butterflies, as animals can surely be considered a natural resource AND Monarchs a journey each year (just like our crazy daisies!) all the way from Canada, through Texas and into Mexico!!!  Perfect!!

Each booth was required to have a sample of food from their country and our local Mexican restaurant was kind enough to donate rice.  Thanks Tony!!

Our girls made butterfly swaps using tulle, pipe cleaners and pony beads for the head.  So cute and so super easy to do!!  Thank goodness, because we had to make 130 of them!!

Our girls were each responsible for learning a word in Spanish or a fact about girl scouting in Mexico that they could teach each other (Journey requirement) and could share with the other scouts when they visited our booth!  For example - we discovered that the Spanish word for Daisy is Margarita!!  We won't be forgetting that one - ha!

We also had our girls dress like Daisy/Brownie scouts or 'Gacelas' by having them wear the uniform in Mexico - white shirt, dark blue pants and a yellow bandana - how easy is that?!?  We added a tissue paper flower that we made during our meeting to their hair so our Gacelas would look like flowers in a butterfly garden (learning about caring for the natural resource is another Journey requirement).  Aren't we 'clever and efficient' co-leaders?!  I think so!!

Our Daisy mom from Guanajuato, Mexico, who just so happens to be an architect as well (how lucky is that?!) volunteered to do our display board and our table display as well.  I expected something fabulous from someone so talented and we weren't disappointed!!

She also helped translate the girl scout song 'Make New Friends' into Spanish so our Margaritas could perform it at the end of the evening.  She even stayed to help serve rice and keep our 'tour guides' on track and we are just so blessed to have her!!

At our last meeting before the event, our girls made the tissue paper flowers and made tissue paper monarchs to help round out our booth decorations.  They were so simple to complete and I think the girls did an awesome job!!  Don't you?!

This was probably the first big event that our girls have had a chance to do with other troops and they all seemed to have a great time!  If you are looking for a way to celebrate Thinking Day in your area, I would encourage you to consider a 'World Tour!!'  If you celebrate Thinking Day some other way, I'd love to hear about it too!