Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C(fan)/350°F/Gas 4.
Melt 100 g Chocolate either in a microwave or over a pan of simmering water. Whisk 2 Eggs in a separate bowl.
In a large mixing bowl, beat 125 g Butter and 275 g Caster sugar together until smooth. Slowly add the eggs and beat well.
Add 50 g Self-raising flour, 25 g Plain flour, 2 tablespoon Cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon Ground cinnamon, 0.5 teaspoon Vanilla extract and juice and zest of 1 Orange. Mix well to form a smooth batter. Pour in the melted chocolate and mix again.
Grease and line a 20cm (8 inch) tray. Pour the batter into the tin and smooth over the top.
Bake for 35 minutes. Once cooked leave in the tin to cool for 20 minutes.
Cut into triangles and decorate like Christmas trees. Use icing for tinsel, 5 Matchmaker chocolate sticks for the trunk and Sugar decorations for baubles and stars.
Notes
It is best to use eggs at room temperature for these brownies. Adding cold eggs to the batter can sometimes make the softened butter and chocolate hard again, and this can sometimes affect the texture of the finished brownies.
We make our brownies in an 8x10 inch pan. This results in the perfect pan of brownies to cut in to tree shapes. If you use a different size pan, then you might end up with thicker or thinner brownies.
Allow the brownies to cool fully before attempting to cut them.
You will have some scraps leftover from cutting the brownies. We like to crumble them on to vanilla ice cream.
You can make your Christmas trees as big or as small as you like, however we like little mini ones, so they are almost bite sized.
The nutritional information for this recipe is for the brownies only. Decorations will add calories and will depend on what you use.
If you wanted to make a really simple version of these, that weren't tree shapes, then leave them in the tray and decorate them with icing and sprinkles. They would still have all the festive flavours, without any effort of shaping them.