Peanut Butter M&M Blondies
Who doesn’t love the classic combo of peanut butter and chocolate? Treat your family to this easy dessert from Twin Cities food blogger greens & chocolate.
One of my favorite seasons has arrived: baking season! Between cookie swaps, cookie platters for parties, making treats for my friends and coworkers – and obviously, making cookies for Santa – I’m pretty much knee deep in butter between Thanksgiving and New Years. Not a bad place to be, though, right?
While the holiday season is known for cookies, I can’t help but switch it up every now and then and make bars. Is there anything more Minnesotan than a plate of bars? Okay, well maybe a hotdish is a little more Minnesotan, but still – bars just scream ‘Minnesota!’
I love baking bars for lots of reasons. For my lazy baker self, they’re a lot easier than making cookies. I can just make the batter, pour it all into a pan, pop them in the oven and set my timer. Then I have a ton more time for important things like Pinterest browsing and making funny faces at my son to make him laugh.
This also leaves me more time to start cleaning the hurricane of a mess I undoubtedly made in the kitchen. This definitely comes after the Pinterest browsing and baby-face making, but still – it gets done way sooner than if I make batch after batch of cookies.
Another reason I love bars (and particularly blondies)? The chewy edges! Of course I love the middle pieces, too, but I really love a big edge piece that is part chewy edge and part soft middle. I know there are those of you out there who prefer the soft middle pieces and guess what! We would be perfect blondie-sharing friends. You take the middle pieces, I take the edges and we can live in blondie-eating harmony.
These Peanut Butter M&M Blondies have the perfect edge to middle ratio that blondies should have, in my opinion. This comes from the combination of butter, lots of brown sugar, eggs and a little bit of peanut butter. The peanut butter flavor isn’t super overpowering, but is definitely noticeable. If you want more peanut butter in your blondie, I would suggest using peanut butter M&Ms.
Of course I also suggest using the holiday M&Ms so you can bring these to each and every holiday party you attend looking like a domestic rock star but secretly know they were a breeze to whip up. It’ll be our little secret.
Peanut Butter M&M Blondies
Ingredients
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 cups brown sugar
½ cup creamy peanut butter
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups M&Ms
Directions:
- Heat oven to 350 F. Grease 9×13” baking dish.
- In medium saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar, stirring until smooth. When it is smooth, remove from heat and add peanut butter. Allow to cool while combining the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Add the eggs to the brown sugar and peanut butter mixture, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
- Add the vanilla and stir to combine.
- Pour the mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until combined. It will be a thick, smooth batter.
- Fold in 1 cup of the M&Ms.
- Pour into prepared baking dish and top with remaining ½ cup M&Ms, pressing them down into the batter.
- Bake for 25 minutes. Top will be golden brown.
- Let cool completely. Cut into squares and enjoy!