The holidays are approaching fast, and if your family is like mine, everybody gets together for an extravagant Christmas dinner and each person is expected to bring a homemade dish (even the kids).

If you want to shake up your holiday dessert table with something unique, you should try this recipe for chocolate peppermint bread. It’s fun to make, and it’s delicious, too. Everyone will love this decadent treat.

Here’s a list of the ingredients you need:

½ cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3 eggs
1 ¼ cups flour
¾ cup milk
10 Oreos (optional)
Peppermint candies (optional)

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease a 9×5 loaf pan to prevent the finished product from sticking to the pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine butter, sugar, salt, vanilla and peppermint and vanilla extracts, baking powder, and cocoa powder. Then add the three eggs and mix it all together.
3. Add the flour and stir until it’s completely mixed in, then add the milk and continue to stir until the mixture is uniform. You can use an electric mixer for this if you want.
4. If you’re using the Oreos, chop or crush them up thoroughly, until they’re crumbs. Then, stir them into the batter mixture.
5. Pour the batter into the greased pan and let it bake in the oven for about 70 minutes. To make sure the bread is completely done, poke a fork into the middle of the bread. If it comes out clean, it’s done.
6. If you don’t want to decorate the top of the bread, you can stop here. But if you do, just microwave 5 peppermints in 20-second increments to melt them. When they’re melted, drizzle it onto the top of the bread. WARNING: Be careful, please! Use a microwave safe container! I accidentally used a non-microwavable glass bowl, and it broke into two pieces while it was in the microwave.
7. You can also crush up some more peppermints and sprinkle those pieces on top of the bread as well. Make it look fancy!
8. Let the bread cool inside the pan before you take it out. If you take it out right away, it’s very likely to fall apart.
9. Finally, if you want to package it and make it look nice, you can wrap it with parchment paper and tie a festive bow around it.

Now you’re done! Share your delicious Christmas creation with your family, your friends, or whoever you’re spending the holidays with this season.