The Decadent National Girl Scout Cookie Contest Winning Recipe

— -- There’s certainly nothing wrong with eating Girl Scout cookies straight from the box, but the recipe options with them are endless. To capture all the possibilities, the Girl Scouts teamed up with Taste of Home for its 2015 National Girl Scout Cookie Recipe Contest, inviting Girl Scouts across the country to submit their best recipes.

And now we have a winner. Out of the 2.8 million Girl Scouts nationwide, Stephanie Salmento, 15, rose to the top to win with her Delightful Caramel Bars, which use both Shortbread/Trefoils and Caramel deLites/Samoas to create a decadent dessert.

“My family has a recipe called caramel fudge bars, which was the basis for these,” Salmento told ABC News. “We switched out the top and the bottom layers but then there are also chocolate chips and melted caramels.”

Salmento called winning “overwhelming,” especially since this was the first contest she’d ever entered and she got the $500 grand prize, which will probably go toward college (though she said she wants to put it toward her sweet 16).

“It was really awesome because there are so many people,” she said. “And then I found out I was the only current Girl Scout, which made it really nice because I felt like I was representing the community of Girl Scouts.”

If you have any cookies left from this year’s order, try making Salmento’s recipe.

Stephanie Salmento’s Delightful Caramel Bars Recipe