Celebration Brownies

Ho ho ho!

I said I'd be back with Christmas bakes... and here we are!

Growing up, it was an absolute guarantee in my house that we'd have enough tins of chocolate to open up our own shop. My mum would always buy in some tins for when we had visitors, and the visitors would always bring along a tin so as not to come empty handed. We always had enough Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations and Heroes to last us well into the New Year, so that's my inspiration for this festive bake. I took these into work last week, and my colleagues loved them. Especially trying to figure out which chocolates appeared in their brownie - there was a good 10 minutes worth of "I think it's a Milky Way," "I had a Snickers", and "Oh my god there was a whole piece of Galaxy in that bite!" :-D

Prep time: 15 mins
Bake time: 40-45 mins
Makes 16 brownies

Ingredients:
225g margarine
75g cocoa powder
4 medium eggs
300g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
Half a box of Celebrations (around 20 sweets)

1. pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a square brownie tin with greaseproof paper
2. melt the margarine in the microwave for 30 seconds, then stir in the cocoa powder. Place this to one side to cool. (You might want to start unwrapping the sweets at this point!)
3. in a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla until pale and foamy. Whisk in the cooled cocoa mixture until well combined.
4. sift half of the flour into the bowl and fold into the mixture. Sift the other half of the flour into the bowl, then add the sweets before folding in until all combined.
5. pour your mixture into the prepared brownie tin and level with the back of a spoon. Pop this in the oven for 35-40mins - when done the brownies should be springy to touch but still a little gooey in the centre
6. remove from the oven and allow the brownies to cool in the tin. Once cool, take out of the pan and cut into 16 pieces.