Peanut Butter Funfetti Cake Blondies (and the Dagoba Chocolate Giveaway Winner!)

Happy April Fool's Day! Has anyone played any jokes on you today? And if so, did you fall for any? ;) Thus far, nobody has tried to play any pranks on me, nor I on anyone else. But the day's not over yet! So there's still a chance...

I'll confidently tell you one thing that is not a joke though - these blondies! These are real and boy, are they good. I was inspired to make these by a recent delicious looking post on a blog I love, Taste and Tell, for cake batter blondies. And I've also seen variations of these blondies floating around on Pinterest like this one from Cookies & Cups. I just happened to have funfetti cake mix on hand and I was in the baking mood, so I got to workin' on making them!

As I just mentioned, I had seen a few different variations of this recipe around the web, so I kind of combined a couple of them to lead to the recipe you'll read below. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the most important difference in my recipe...the addition of Reese's pieces peanut butter eggs! I also had these on hand and figured, why the heck not add them to these blondies? It was a good decision, let me tell you.

Ingredients:

-1 box Funfetti cake mix (18.25 oz.)

-1 egg

-1/4 cup vegetable oil

-1/2 cup milk (I used 1%)

-1 cup Reese's pieces peanut butter eggs

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan with cooking spray. Place the cake mix, egg, oil, and milk in a large bowl and mix until incorporated (you can mix the ingredients by hand or with an electric mixer; I mixed by hand and it worked well). The batter will be pretty dense. Mix in the Reese's eggs until evenly distributed (I chose to leave the eggs whole and not chop them up, but you could break/chop them into smaller pieces if you wanted to). Spread into your prepared pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Let cool and cut into pieces (I cut mine into 20 small bars).

A few other ideas... You could easily make these with a yellow or white cake mix too instead of the funfetti. Also, instead of the Reese's peanut butter eggs, you could add other mix-ins such as mini marshmallows or white chocolate chips (or any other flavored baking chips really!). Finally, I saw some recipes that also called for frosting the blondies. If you want to make them a bit more decadent then by all means, top them with your favorite frosting!! And sprinkles perhaps! :)

The fact that I used the Easter-like, pastel colored Reese's eggs makes these a potential Easter dessert too...just a thought if you're looking for a super simple Easter treat to try!

And finally, as promised, it's time to reveal the winner of the Dagoba organic mint chocolate bar giveaway! Using random.org, the winner is "chocolate mom," who left this comment about her favorite type of chocolate: "What a great idea to have a contest involving chocolate! Anything having to do with chocolate is time well spent. I absolutely love dark chocolate. I use Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips in my cookies, and I love to nibble on chocolate that is at least 60% or higher dark chocolate. For holidays and special occasions, I like to use Valrhona chocolate. It seems to give a rich flavor to desserts. As for truffles and other similar goodies, I think Neuhaus, which is a Belgian brand, is unbelievable. Thanks for focusing on chocolate. There's nothing better."

Congrats, chocolate mom! Please email me at cbarber15@yahoo.com so I can send you some delicious chocolate! And thanks to everyone who entered by commenting - it was really fun for me to see all your comments! Dark chocolate seems to be a favorite for many of you.

:)