Stacey's MBS&V Brownies

MBS&V = Mars Bar, Salt and Vinegar. Bear with me.

When we decided that the theme for this month's bake would be "guilty pleasures", I knew exactly what mine would be based on: a delightfully disgusting habit I discovered as a young teenager. See I was a young teenager in the early 2000's, in the time before Jamie Oliver launched his attack on Turkey Twizzlers and before anyone even considered sending their kids to school with a healthy, nutritious packed-lunch. So my packed lunch usually consisted of a soggy sandwich, a packet of crisps (Salt and Vinegar, naturally) and a chocolate bar. I've never been overly fond of sandwiches, so that usually got binned, and I spent my later school years (without my mother's knowledge or consent, I should add!) lunching on mars bars and salt and vinegar crisps. But boy did I know how to make the most of it! I would break the mars bar up into chunks, and put these INSIDE the bag of salt and vinegar crisps. I would then take a chunk of mars bar out of the crisp bag, sandwich it between two crisps, and shove the whole lot in my mouth in one bite. I know, it sounds disgusting, but trust me, the combination of crispy, crunchy, salty crisps, with sweet, gooey mars bar is the tastiest contradiction ones tongue could ever know.

As I got older an wiser I started eating healthy lunches, but ever so often I'd treat myself to my tasty guilty pleasure... so that's why we ended up with Mars Bar and Salt & Vinegar brownies!

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 40 minutes
Makes 12 brownies

Ingredients:
225g margarine
100g cocoa powder
3 mars bars
4 eggs
450g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
2 packets of salt and vinegar crisps

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (180) and line a square cake tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the margarine in a saucepan over a low heat. Once completely melted, remove from the heat and stir in the cocoa powder until a thick, smooth mixture forms. Leave this to one side to cool.
3. Whilst the chocolate mixture is cooling, chop your mars bars into bite-sized chunks.
4. Tip the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract into a large mixing bowl and whisk at a high speed until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is thick, pale and creamy. Fold in the cooled chocolate mixture and the chunks of mars bar until the chocolate is all stirred through.
5. Add the flour to the bowl and fold in until just combined, then transfer the mixture into the prepare baking tin.
6. Crush the crisps into small chunks and sprinkle these over the top of the brownie mixture. Bake for 40 minutes, until firm to touch. Allow the brownie to cool in the tin before cutting into chunks.