Nabisco’s been spitting out new Oreo flavors like hotcakes recently. I’d like to think that this is the reason their Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo package is so goddamn boring.
I mean, look at that thing. Yellow – one of the classic Christmas colors, of course. An Oreo. And a gingerbread man that looks like he was decorated by the most unimaginative person on earth. Nary a Santa hat, tree ornament, or even a snowflake in sight.
Ah well, at least the gingerbread man looks happy. I’m assuming because he’s got the spotlight all to himself.
Can I stress all to himself? Because there’s not even a gingerbread man imprint on the cookie. In fact, if not for the scent that wafted out after I opened the package, just looking at the cookie itself, it just looks like a Golden Oreo. My heart just shrunk a size.
If the gingerbread man knew that his friends had been ground up and turned into a creamy paste, he might not be smiling so happily on the package.
Fortunately for Oreos, however, the boring packaging and cookie itself are masking a hidden treasure of gingerbread goodness. The creme does a great job of mixing the tastes of brown sugar, cinnamon, a bit of molasses, and whatever the hell else goes into making gingerbread cookies. I’m assuming one of those is ginger, but you wouldn’t know it from the ingredients list, which reads something like “sugar, sugar, flour, oil, sugar, oil, and natural and artificial flavors”.
Those last two really seem to be carrying the weight of making this cookie taste so much like actual gingerbread, and I have to admit, using the Golden Oreo as a vehicle for the creme was a good choice. The cookies add their own sweetness, but don’t interfere with the gingerbread flavor.
Well, that’s it. Shortest review ever.
Do you feel a little disappointed? I know I do. So much so, in fact, that I decided to try and eek some real Christmas spirit out of these cookies and make a Gingerbread Oreo house.
I have never made a gingerbread house. In fact, I’ve never really made anything out of food, unless you count the times I’d scrape the disgusting peanut butter out of the cheese cracker sandwiches they fed us in elementary school day care and made sculptures of noses out of it. Noses? I don’t know why, either, but it’s the only thing I remember sculpting. Maybe it had to do with the chronic sinusitis I had as a child.
Come to think of it, I have little to no knowledge or experience in architecture, structural integrity, infrastructure support, or pretty much any other subject that would help me build a house out of cookies.
This may not go well.
Many things went wrong during this experiment, as you may imagine. At first, I tried cutting the Gingerbread Oreos in half and using the flat base as a foundation, anchored by Gingerbread Oreo creme. I summoned my inner “everything I’ve learned from watching reality baking shows” and tried to roll the creme I’d carefully scraped off the cookies between my palms to act as an edible glue.
As it turns out, Oreo creme is neither fondant nor modeling chocolate, and rolling it between your palms results in…well, a bunch of delicious-smelling Oreo filling stuck to your hands. Thank god the odor of Gingerbread Oreos is quite pleasant. My hands smelled like Christmas.
Worried that this project would never even get off the ground floor, literally, I took some whole Gingerbread Oreos and just started smashing them together, because that’s the obvious next step. Surprisingly, this actually worked. I took my Oreo halves and smushed them onto the first ones, making a second layer.
I was pretty proud that I’d managed to make a second layer that didn’t immediately collapse, but soon realized I could go no further. That’s okay though, because I’d already thought of a roofing plan – White Chocolate Peppermint Pringles.
The main problem with this step is that I had no roof. I was determined to use the Pringles, however; they’ve been sitting around irritating me, and I figured this would be a safer use than chucking the canister at a random stranger, which is an urge I’d been fighting pretty much since I reviewed them.
Looking around the kitchen for something to save my gingerbread “house”, I found the perfect roofing material: Hot Chocolate Pop-Tarts!
I probably could have stuck the Pringles onto the Pop-Tarts with some of that Oreo creme, but I already knew there was no saving this disaster, so this is the finished product. The worst gingerbread house ever.
I love it.
Nabisco made the most boring packaging ever for Gingerbread Oreos, which is a shame, but I had fun spending half an hour making a horrible abomination out of them, so there is that. Plus, they taste and smell quite like gingerbread, which is, I suppose, the salient point. Much like my gingerbread “house”, I have a feeling the remaining Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreos won’t last long, because while they may not look like Christmas, they definitely taste like it.
Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo
- Score: 3.5 out of 5 realizations that I will never win a Food Network Challenge
- Price: $2.68
- Size: 15.25 oz. package
- Purchased at: Walmart
- Nutritional Quirks: Zero ingredients of actual gingerbread cookies listed, and yet, tastes like gingerbread. Christmas magic.