Love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate? Or are you curious to try another type of Girl Scout Cookie? Try these Tagalongs with chocolate, peanut butter and shortbread! These are a pushy recipe Dear Reader because they're THAT moreish!
Tagalongs are a Girl Scout Cookie used for fundraising. A tagalong has a vanilla cookie base, peanut butter filling and a chocolate coating. They're also one of the easiest Girl Scout Cookies to make and taste SO much better than the real thing! The secret to this very moreish version of Tagalongs is the mix of crunchy and smooth peanut butter.
A Tagalong uses Peter Pan brand peanut butter and a chocolatey coating. They're made by two companies: Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Bakers (the latter call Peanut Butter Patties). The thing I was struck with when I first tried a tagalong was how much better it would be with proper chocolate but the idea of the tagalong is simple but delicious.
Chocolate melts vs chocolate bits: there's a difference between chocolate melts and chocolate bits. Chocolate or candy melts don't use cocoa butter and use vegetable oil instead and are shaped flatter than bits making them easier to melt as the name suggests. Taste wise melts don't tend to taste as good as chocolate bits because of the lack of cocoa butter. They're cheaper and come in larger sizes (in Australia). In America they're referred to as candy melts rather than chocolate.
Milk or dark chocolate? Milk chocolate will obviously be sweeter and the result is like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Dark chocolate is a good choice if you don't like your cookies as sweet.
Peanut Butter: I used a combination of crunchy and smooth peanut butter. I used a combo because while I love crunchy peanut butter (I used Pic's), the texture of the peanut butter shows up under the chocolate. But feel free to use your favourite smooth peanut butter be it fancy or regular! I love all sorts of peanut butter from supermarket to fancy-the only one I don't like is health food store peanut butter!
My version of the Tagalong cookie has a fatter section of peanut butter because I love peanut butter so much and I think it tastes better with more peanut butter. If you want to make them thinner and more like the real thing, halve the quantity of filling and make the peanut butter layer half the thickness of the one above. Mine was about as thick as the cookie itself.
Coconut oil: I add some coconut oil to make the chocolate easier to dip in and a bit smoother. If you don't want to use coconut oil you can use oil instead (you can use any kind except for flavoured oils like sesame oil).
Shrinkage: These shortbreads don't expand very much so there's no need to sit them too far apart but they may spread a few millimetres.
Allergic to peanuts? You can definitely replace peanut butter with other nut butters or sunflower seed butter.
Thermomix version: these are really simple to make using a Thermomix. Here's a link to the Thermomix recipe for Tagalongs!
The peanut butter and chocolate combination is a classic favourite. I gave some to Laura who took them to her boyfriend's house to share with him but them promptly took them home so that she could eat them by herself. "I thought he won't miss what he won't know." she said. She's a sharer like me, but sometimes we will come across something that is highly addictive that we don't want to share. It's rare but it does happen.
Ivy loved them too saying that she hated me for starting an addiction to them. I loved them so much that I gave them away because I couldn't stop eating them. So I guess what I'm trying to say Dear Reader is to make these, but also be prepared to start an addiction that you can't quit!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you like the chocolate and peanut butter combination? Have you ever meant to share something with someone only to take it back because you like it so much?
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