How to bake crushed peppermint into cake?

I'm still fairly new to baking and I'm making cupcakes for a Christmas party on Thursday and I couldn't seem to find a recipe online for the the kind I want to make, which is a peppermint cupcake. Instead of sprinkling it on top of the icing, I wanted to mix the peppermint into the cake batter and bake it.

Basically, should I play it safe and use peppermint extract/sprinkle the crushed peppermint on top? or is it possible to bake the candy into the cake?