Fudgy easter brownies

This Easter, we've indulged in these rich, chocolatey, fudgy brownies incorporating those well-known mini eggs with a crisp candy shell. Use your favourites, but ours were made with the ones in the bright yellow packet which I can never resist at this time of year.  To balance the sweetness of all that milk chocolate, we've used dark chocolate, extra cocoa and a shot or two of espresso to keep the grown ups happy.

​Quick and easy to make and bake! Happy Easter!

Fudgy Easter Brownies
(makes 20-24 small squares)
 
Ingredients: 

For the brownie batter:
300g dark chocolate (50-70% cocoa solids)
200g  unsalted butter
200g  caster sugar
200g  light brown sugar
5 medium eggs + 1 yolk
30 ml espresso (approx. a double shot)
2 tsp  vanilla essence
½ tsp salt
180g plain flour
50g   cocoa powder
160g mini eggs (2 packs), lightly smashed
 
For the topping:
30g    white chocolate, melted
30g    milk or dark chocolate, melted
160g (2 packs) mini eggs, broken in half/large pieces
 
 
Preheat your oven to 180°C. Line and grease a 13 x 9 inch (or similar*) baking tin.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate together over a pan of boiling water or using the microwave in 30 second bursts. Add the sugars and combine, ensuring any lumps are smoothed out. Add the eggs, yolk, vanilla and espresso and mix well.
 
In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, cocoa and salt, then carefully fold into the wet mixture until just (but fully) combined. Take your broken pieces of mini eggs (you can use a rolling pin to smash a little in the bag, but make sure you don’t crush them into tiny pieces) and fold into the mixture, ensuring an even distribution.
 
Pour finished batter into your lined tin. *If you don’t have a tin of the suggested size, you can use any tin that offers a similar surface baking area – just multiply the length by the width and if the result lies in the range 100 – 120 square inches, it should be fine (eg a 10 x 12 inch tin would have a surface baking area of 120 square inches).
 
Bake for around 25-30 mins. The finished brownie will be fudgy not ‘cakey’ (hence no raising agent in the mix), so you are looking for skewer to come out clean-ish, not squeaky clean. It should retain a little squidginess and will continue to bake a little once out of the oven as you leave to cool in the tin.
 
Once cool, turn out and using a teaspoon or a narrow nozzle on a piping bag, drizzle both the milk and the white chocolate over the brownies, then place the chunky pieces of broken eggs for the topping into the still warm chocolate. Once arranged, a little wobble show you which mini eggs aren’t stuck in the melted chocolate. Either move to a more chocolatey area or pipe a little extra blob of chocolate to stick it down. Cut into 20-24 pieces and allow the topping to cool fully before you move the brownies into a tin, so that the topping can set and fix the mini eggs in place.

Out of season, you could replace the mini eggs with a combination of white chocolate chips and walnuts or pecans. 
 
NB If you want to make a smaller quantity, halve all ingredients and make in a 7 inch square tin.