After Eight Brownie - The perfect Christmas treat.

Lets talk dinner parties. I would love nothing more than to host a mad-men-esque evening of elegance, dinner and cocktails for my friends. In my head I swan around in a beautiful dress, mixing martinis, serving food in matching crockery with soft jazz playing in the background.

In reality I don't have a dining room, so my guests have to eat their dinner on their knees, and I tend to panic-cook far too much food, which people feel obliged to eat until they eventually slip into some sort of sugar-coma on my incredibly comfy M&S sofa.

I tend to end up making picky food, which doesn't require a knife and fork to eat. Pizza, flatbreads with various dips, and of course - something sweet to nibble on.

With Christmas getting steadily nearer I like to have a selection of sweet treats to hand for those people who pop in to drop off presents, or for anyone who gives us a gift that we are not expecting.

These Christmas inspired brownies are the perfect quick and easy sweet treat to whip up quickly, yet still impress.

After Eights were always a bit of a Christmas institution in my house growing up. I remember many extremely competitive festive family board games were accompanied by a box of after eight mints and a few too many glasses of wine. In fact, I bet if we pulled out the box of trivial pursuit right now, there would be some After Eight wrappers in there somewhere.

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After Eight Brownies by December-17-2013
Ingredients

• 400g Dark Chocolate
• 400g Butter
• 500g Caster Sugar
• 6 Eggs (medium)
• 230g Plain Flour
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 Packet of After Eight Mints

Instructions Preheat your oven to 180C and line your brownie tin with either tin foil or greaseproof. (I prefer tin foil)Melt the chocolate and butter together, you can do this in a pan or microwave, whichever you prefer. I use a non stick pan. Leave the chocolate mixture to cool slightlyWhisk the sugar and eggs together (if you were adding additional flavours such as coffee or vanilla, you would whisk it in here)In a separate bowl weigh out the flour, baking powder and salt.Pour the chocolate/butter into the eggs/sugar and whisk until combined. It will be lovely a gooey.Sift in the flour and stir in until all the flour has disappeared. Be careful not to overmix at this point, just until you can no longer see any white flour.Pour roughly half the mixture into your prepared brownie tin. I use a 39cm x 27cm x 2.5cm tin, you could use a deeper tin and adjust the cooking time slightly.Place a single layer of after eights over the brownie mix, if I had been using a smaller tin I might have gone for a double layer.Pour the remaining mix over the top and place in a preheated oven for 25-35 minutes. The top should be crisp and cracking slightly and the middle still slightly fudgey.Once cooked, leave to cool completely then cut into lovely big chunky squares. I found a liberal dusting of icing sugar finished them off nicely.

Do you have any family food traditions at Christmas time? I'd love to hear them.

I received product and ingredient vouchers from After Eight for writing this post, all views are my own.