When you’re a massive international snack company, there’s no better way to celebrate the holidays than pumping your signature cookie filling with red food coloring and peppermint oil. Let’s eat some of that.
The holidays are upon us, and the stores are packed with festive versions of regular products that we normally wouldn’t buy but hey—it’s Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa season, so why not? Holiday-themed snacks are an important part of snack culture, adding just the right degree of sadness to a person sitting alone in their darkened apartment eating cookies while everyone else is celebrating.
Me? I just buy them so I can share them with you, my only partly-imaginary internet friends.
And so, Peppermint Oreos.
Finding these in your local store might be a bit confusing, as these minty creations are one of two red-filled Oreos this holiday season, along with the so-called Holiday Oreos, which are just normal Oreos with red food coloring and no peppermint oil. They’re like the orange-cremed Halloween Oreos, or the yellow or blue-cremed non-denominational Spring Oreos—pretty much pointless.
But there is a point to Peppermint Oreos, and that point is making me imagine they are filled with chewed-up Big Red gum.
How are they? Well, they’re certainly minty, but the sugar overwhelms the distinctive taste of peppermint to the point where it really could be any sort of mint. That peppermint punch comes through a bit stronger when eating the creme on its own, but as a complete unit it’s more of a strong suggestion than a demanding taste.
I taste the Peppermint Oreo three ways in the video above—altogether, creme alone and dunked. Dunked is definitely the way to go. The wet cookie mush, the creme and the milk all come together to form a festive holiday party in your mouth.
I’d like to imagine Nabisco’s food scientists decided to set their rigid intellectualism aside and let faith take the front seat for this festive holiday creation. Faith in a jolly old elf who spends an entire evening delivering presents and eating milk and cookies. Not milk...then cookies. Milk and cookies. So they tailored an experience that’s best with all of those elements combined. It’s a Christmas miracle!
Snacktaku is Kotaku’s take on the wild and wonderful world of eating things, but not eating meals. Eating meals is for those with too much time on their hands.
To contact the author of this post, write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @bunnyspatial.