Blondies a tasty outlet for leftover Halloween candy
My favorite holiday, Halloween, just ended. My favorite thing about Halloween: the candy. My favorite candies: Butterfingers and Hershey bars and $100,000 bars.
Right after trick-or-treating, my brother and I dump our buckets on the kitchen table and see how many of our favorites we have. I'm pretty sure between both of us we had more than 100 pieces of candy.
I think it's good to eat three pieces a day, but sometimes Mom won't let me eat that many.
So we started looking for other things to do with our candy. You can chop it up and sprinkle it on ice cream or on top of cupcakes, or you can make blondies.
Blondies are like brownies but without the chocolate or cocoa powder. Using blondie batter, instead of brownie batter, allows the candy flavor to come through. I like Butterfingers, but you can use whatever chocolate candy you want.
A word from Mom: What makes Halloween the boys' favorite holiday makes it my least favorite. I work too hard on a daily basis to get them to eat healthy, then this holiday comes along and sabotages me.
Not that I'm a saint — I'm like 70 percent of parents (the number cited by the National Confectionery Association) who sneak bite-sized chocolate bars from their kids plastic pumpkins.
I'm also not a Butterfinger fan, which is why I like the flexibility of this recipe. I'd make these blondies with Heath bars or Nestle Crunch or Mounds. I also think it would work with chopped caramels or those funky peanut butter things in orange and black wrappers.
If after baking these blondies you still have an obscene amount of candy, keep in mind that most varieties — from the bite-sized chocolate bars to jelly beans to hard candies — keep six to nine months when stored in a cool dry place. Save some colorful hard and chewy candies for decorating holiday cookies, cakes and gingerbread houses.