I'd tell you that you'll make new friends and impress your family when you pull a freshly baked batch of homemade Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies out of your oven (or your freezer), but I know that you won't be sharing these with your friends. These are all for you, on one of those lonely weeknights in front of the TV, with Downton Abbey blaring and the cat nestled quietly at your feet.

Too much, I know, but here's how to throw together an extremely quick and easy batch of these annual favorites in a pinch.

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First thing's first. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. in a big bowl, combine a box of devil's food cake mix, two eggs, two tablespoons of ice cold water, two tablespoons of cooking oil, and 1/2 a cup of your favorite cocoa. Blend it all together, not minding what a huge mess you've made of things.

Let the dough you've made rest for twenty minutes. This is the perfect time for a cigarette while you remember all the badges you earned as a child.

After that dough is nice and rested, it's time to get it ready for the oven. Roll the dough into 1/2 inch balls, then set them two inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. From there, flatten them into the cookie shape you know and love. They cook from start to finish in about eight minutes, but as always, use your toothpick to double-check. Poke the center, and when you pull out, it should come up clean. If not, give a little longer, depending on how stained the toothpick gets.

While they're in the oven, grab yourself some Valrhona Chocolate, which you can get online or at some specialty cooking stores. Valrhona is so wonderful for baking, icing, and just about everything. It has all the complexity of a chocolate flavor profile that you're looking for, with an emphasis on that unbeatable earthy sweetness, at an impossibly good price point. But in a pinch, Ghiardelli, Lindt, or even Hershey's will work wonders, too.

Break about a chocolate bar's worth of the stuff over a double boiler and give it a good melt. Once it's melted, add three drops of mint to the stuff. Give it a stir and a taste. How wonderful is that?

Grab your cookies out of the oven and let them cool on the wire rack. Once they're cool enough to handle without crumbling apart, give them a dip in the chocolate. Let the chocolate dry, and you're pretty much ready to call yourself scout leader.

What's there to do from here? Wonderful that you should ask. If you're intrepid, and lord knows you're intrepid, why not turn it into a No Bake Thin Mint Cheesecake?

Very quickly: finely crush as many of your cookies up as you need to line a pie tin with the crumbs. Add a combination of blended ricotta, cream cheese, and honey, to taste, over it. Top it with the rest of your cookies, either coarsely crushed or whole, depending upon what you're feeling. Put it in the fridge overnight. Serve immediately the next day.