Happy Camper Loves: Baking... Easy Peppermint Dessert!

It's not often that I step into the kitchen to do anything beyond grab a Diet Coke. Trust me, it's best that I don't. I can sorta bake, but I can't cook to save my life. I am forever indebted to the creator of the microwave, and of course my wonderful chef of a husband. With this caveat in mind, I am not galavanting as some master baker, I'm quite the opposite -- a real girl who kinda sorta sometimes attempts to bake.

Something came over me this evening, and I grabbed a Diet Coke and stayed in the kitchen (dun dun dunnn). I really wanted to make something easy and festive, but mostly easy and I had planned to share with coworkers the day before our holiday break. Way back when my friends and I had bake parties, fondly self-proclaimed as "The Bakehouse", we found a recipe for the Easy Peppermint Dessert (someone took creative liberties when coming up with that name). It was one of the best things that we made that day, next to pumpkin whoopee pies, and I've made it several times since. This time we tried microwaveable hot fudge -- you'll find that we made a rookie mistake by not warming and adding milk, but hey! you live and learn.

*Forewarning* This does require a LOT of freezing time -- total of 11 hours. So don't leave it for the last minute if you can help it.

Alright! Let's b-b-b-bake!!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

1/2 gallon Peppermint Ice Cream, softened (can be light, pink, white, white with candy cane chunks... basically if it says "Peppermint", you're good).

2 cups Frozen Whipped Topping, thawed (aka 1 container of Cool Whip)

2 lbs Creme-filled Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, crushed (aka 2 bags/trays of Oreos)

1/2 cup Butter, melted

2 cups Hot Fudge

Peppermint Candies or Candy Canes, crushed

STEP 1: Crush the cookies!! I used to do this by putting the Oreos in a Ziploc and pounding the heck out of them. Now I have this fancy Cuisinart that I got on Joss + Main -- cuts the time in half!

Boom - crumbs.

STEP 2: Melt 1/2 c of butter and mix in with Oreos!

STEP 3: Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin. (End impromptu rap session). Press the mixture firmly to the bottom of an ungreased pan. Now I used two 9" round pans (because that's all I've got), but you can also use a 13x9 inch pan.

STEP 4: In a large bowl, stir together the package of whipped topping and the full 1/2 gallon of Peppermint ice cream. Stir well!!

Spread evenly across the cookie crust!

STEP 5: Freeze for 3 hours or until firm.

STEP 6: Okay, this is where we went south. The hot fudge topping was a bust. It didn't spread and just looked like big (excuse my language) poops. I tried to fix it, but you can't win them every time! I think what would help would be to heat it up in a saucepan adding milk so it spreads easily. Unless you want to go the hard route and use baking chocolate, sugar, vanilla, etc. etc.

Tracy's pan...