Leftover Halloween Candy Blondies

I seriously misjudged the amount of trick-or-treaters we would get this year.  Having lived in a house that was tucked behind another house, which were both on a little sidestreet with a small amount of families, I was used to getting four or five kids, total on Halloween. With this being our first year in the new house, and seeing plenty of kids running around the neighborhood, I thought to myself, "Finally. This is the year we get a serious amount of trick or treaters."  So I bought enough candy for the imagined hordes of kids I thought would be knocking on our door.  We ended up getting a respectable amount but there will still tons of leftover candy. Not wanting Andrew and I to take care of the problem by eating it all ourselves, I split the leftovers into two piles for each of us to take into the office. However, I did set aside a small amount of candy bars to try with a new recipe. I just can't believe I didn't think of doing this with Halloween candy before.  (And as I announced to my coworkers, the real Joyce is officially back. As in, the calm, relaxed Joyce that now has time to bake with the stress of wedding planning behind her).  Anyway, enough of the third person, onto the recipe!

This is based on the Candy Recycler Blondies posted on Salon.com. While I was intrigued by the salty component of it (pretzels and chips), I sadly didn't have any pretzels on hand so I decided to stick with just the standard blondie portion of the recipe. Which is why I ended up remaining them as well, since I didn't my version justified the "Recycler" title.

Ingredients















•2¼ cups all purpose flour
•1 teaspoon baking soda
•1 teaspoon salt (I used kosher salt for an extra boost of saltiness to compensate for the missing chips and pretzels)
•2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
•¾ cup granulated sugar
•¾ cup light brown sugar
•2 large eggs
•1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•1 cup coarsely chopped Halloween chocolate candy (I used 5 Milky Ways, 3 Snickers, 1 bag of M&Ms, 1/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/8 cup of peanut butter chips that I had leftover from another baking project)
•2 tablespoons coffee grounds, for the true spirit of compost
•¾ cup salty snacks, coarsely crushed (I used equal parts potato chips and pretzels)

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 375° F and grease a 15 x 10 baking pan.
2.Sift together flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3.In another bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
4.Add in eggs one at a time. Beat until very well combined and light.
5.Add vanilla.
6.Slowly mix dry ingredients with the wet until completely combined (I chopped the fun size candy bars into six chunks and had a whole pile of chocolatey goodness waiting to be mixed in).


7.With a wooden spoon, slowly mix in your crushed Halloween candy.

8.Swirl in coffee grounds. (I'm not a coffee drinker and the thought of the texture of the coffee grounds in the bars scared me off from using them).

9.Very gently add the crushed chips and pretzels. Don't overstir or they'll break into crumbs.

10.Spread batter evenly into the greased baking pan.

11.Bake at 375° for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean and edges are golden.

12.Cool completely before cutting.

I suspect that I may have overbaked mine, but they were still too wet in the center at 30 minutes, so I ended up baking them for an extra five minutes.  These came out to have more of a buttery, crispy texture like shortbread.  My coworkers liked them, but I don't think I consider this a special enough recipe to make again until I have another overload of Halloween candy next year. I'd love to try Reese's peanut butter cups in them as well, but will be smart enough to set some of those aside before my coworkers can get them (which happened this year).