Ingredients:
7 oz (56%) semisweet chocolate
3 full-sized candy canes, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
6 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
12 Candy Cane (or mint) flavored Oreos, broken into large pieces

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray with baking spray or grease and flour one 8×8 inch baking pan. In a saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and chocolate together over low heat. Stir occasionally, and when the chocolate is nearly melted, remove from heat. Whisk until smooth. Set aside. In a small bowl, stir together flour, salt, baking powder. In a separate bowl, beat together the brown sugar, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Slowly stream the chocolate mixture into the eggs and mix to combine. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients and mix until the batter is thick and glossy. Stir in most of the Oreos and half of the candy cane chunks. Pour into prepared pan and sprinkle with remaining candy cane bits and Oreos.

Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with one or two crumbs.

My thoughts:

I saw Candy Cane Oreos at the store and couldn’t resist picking up a box. I don’t normally buy cookies but I will admit to a fondness for holiday Oreos, they are always so fresh tasting and I like the seasonal designs. Unfortunately when I opened this box they were all messed up looking! For a lot of the cookies the Oreo and holiday design side was facing in towards the cream filling so the outside was odd and flat. Some of the cookies only had half of the usual filling, some had extra cookie bits protruding from the side of the cream filling (despite there being no broken cookies in the box) and still more had oddly uneven amounts of filling-half of the cookie would look normal and the other half was nearly flat. That’s no fun! They tasted perfectly fine so I didn’t want to toss them but they were not a cute as I was hoping. So I decided to make something with them rather than eating them plain.

Most of the recipes for Oreo brownies I’ve seen call for a box mix but well, I’m already cooking with a store-bought cookie so why would I want to use a mix for the brownie part too? I know some people swear that brownie mix is even better than homemade (gasp) but I don’t think you can beat a homemade brownie made with luscious dark chocolate. You do have to melt that chocolate but it is easy, I swear and makes for better, richer brownies than you could hope for from a mix or from using cocoa alone.

I stirred in some candy canes to up the mint flavor and tie in the candy cane flavor of the Oreos and let me tell you, I have never smelled batter that was that mint-chocolate-y before. Yum. The brownies themselves are intensely chocolate with hints of mint and a fudgey but not too fudgey (or worse, dense), creamy texture.