If you’re accused of being a Christmas scrooge, more concerned with wrestling the iron than wrestling a turkey out of some chump's hand at the supermarket, then you’ll be able to fool your loved ones into thinking you’ve got a bit of Christmas spirit with this awesomely simple recipe. It’s a high protein, high fat brownie recipe, but you can substitute the almonds for oats if you’re trying to keep the bloat going until the New Year.

Enjoy...

Ingredients:

(makes 8 brownies)

• 200g almond meal or oatmeal
• 1 cup of Vanilla protein powder
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 50g unsweetened dried cranberries
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp all spice
• zest of 1 lemon

(If that’s too many ingredients for you to handle, you can replace all the spices and lemon zest with a pumpkin pie spice mix)

 Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C or 350 degrees F.
• Get two large bowls and put all of your dry ingredients into one bowl and all of the wet ingredients into the other.
• Using a whisk, mix all of the dry ingredients well; it’s important to do this in order to make sure the baking powder and spices are evenly distributed.
• Using that same whisk, beat up all of the wet ingredients until smooth. Add them to the dry mix.
• Mix it all together and put it into a 9”x 9” baking tray.
• Bake for about 20 minutes. (Don’t overcook them, or they won't be sticky and gooey).
• Finally, shove them in your face (once cooled, of course) while re-reading 27 Reasons to Be Big to take your mind off your relatives and so called "friends" eating you out of house and home.

Seasons greetings!