You can make festive chocolate-peppermint mini pies in cupcake tins

‘Tis the season for nonstop desserts!

Holiday party hosts know it’s a good idea to have easy-to-eat sweets on the buffet in addition to grander confections like pie or cake. Christmas cookies and chocolates work just fine for this — but if you really want to make a good impression on your guests, try individual-sized mini pies!

The folks at Eating Well shared a recipe for charming chocolate-peppermint miniature pies just in time for the holiday baking marathon. Apparently, with the proper use of cupcake tins, you can miniaturize just about anything.

The recipe calls for crushed chocolate graham crackers to create a pie crust. This is formed into a dough with the addition of brown sugar, butter and an egg. The dough is then pressed into the cupcake tin and baked.

Each crust is lined with a a thin layer of chocolate on the bottom and frozen briefly to set. After this, it’s filled with a mixture of fat-free whipped topping, confectioner’s sugar and peppermint extract. (A few drops of red food coloring can be added, too, for a cute, pink-peppermint hue.)

Once assembled, the mini pies can chill in the freezer for up to a day. A final dollop of whipped topping and some crushed peppermint candies add the finishing touch before serving. Best of all, according to the recipe, each sweet little pie has only 11.1 grams of carbohydrates — a good piece of info when you’ve got loved ones with diabetes concerns, as I do.

Check out the full recipe here.

If you’re not a pie person (and I am not a pie person), the same folks devised a super-easy recipe for vanilla candy cane peppermint bars and shared it on Twitter:

These cookie-like bars have bits of crushed peppermint candies inside. The mint-spiked batter is simply poured into a foil-lined baking pan, then chucked in the oven to bake. Once cooled and cut, their edges are daintily dipped into melted chocolate and sprinkled with a final garnish of crushed peppermints.

The complete recipe is here. They look super-festive and have just 22.4 grams of carbs per bar — about the same as a couple of cookies. Not too shabby for a decadent holiday treat!

Or, you can try making other peppermint treats, like peppermint biscotti from Taste of Home, a peppermint ganache pie from Crazy for Crust and peppermint mocha cupcakes from Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Yum! Now this will help bring some holiday cheer to any table!