Peppermint Chocolate Chip Blondie Bites

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 24-count mini muffin tin. Recipe makes roughly 20. If your muffin tin is non-stick, you can obviously skip the greasing/flouring.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until it is light and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes on high speed. If you don’t have an electric mixer, don’t panic, neither do I. You can use an electric hand mixer. (It is also possible to cream the butter and sugar by hand, but it will be a rather taxing arm workout. Forewarned is forearmed.)

With the mixer on low, add the vanilla. Then add the egg, and mix well, making sure to scrape down the bowl.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.

With the mixer still on low, slowly incorporate the flour into the butter mixture. Once it’s thoroughly combined, use a spatula to fold in the chocolate chips and 1/3 of the crushed candy canes.

Scoop tablespoons of the batter into the prepared pan so that each muffin cup is filled about halfway. Bake for about 12 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Be careful not to over-bake these, people! The toothpick will probably have melted chocolate on it, but it shouldn’t have wet batter.

Remove pan from oven and set it on a rack. Allow your blondies to cool completely in the pan. I know it will be tempting to try to remove your blondies earlier, but resist the urge. They will fall apart if they are not completely cool. Trust me, I learned the hard way. When your blondies are cool, carefully remove them from the mini muffin tin and place them on a rack over parchment.

Now it’s time to decorate. Start by melting your dark chocolate. You can do this in a double boiler, but I just microwave mine on low power for about 2-2½ minutes in a measuring cup with a lip, which makes for easy drizzling. Drizzle your blondies generously with the dark chocolate.

Melt the white chocolate in the microwave for about 1 minute 30 seconds, stirring every 30 seconds. Be very careful and make sure to keep an eye on it, as white chocolate melts faster than dark and it has a tendency to burn. You can remove it from the microwave before it’s fully melted and keep stirring it, as the residual heat should be enough to finish it off. Use a spoon to add a small dollop of white chocolate to each blondie (it’s too thick to drizzle like the dark chocolate) and gently swirl it with the dark chocolate. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be perfect!

Sprinkle the top of each blondie with the remaining crushed candy canes and allow the chocolate to set for about 15 minutes before serving. Eat and be merry!