I’m very fortunate to have a great team supporting me at work, doing admin booking hotels and flights as I travel up and down the country. With this in mind, and as a way of saying thank-you I decided to bake them something nice, so what to cook.

I remember watching Willie Harcourt-Cooze on television in 2008, when the series ‘Willy Wonka’s  Chocolate Factory’ appeared on Channel 4, and told his story of buying a chocolate plantation, setting up a processing factory in the UK, and persuading Waitrose to range his specialist chocolate. I have used ‘Willie’s Cacao’ several times, its fantastic chocolate for cooking and was going to be the star ingredient in my treat for the team. I purchased his first book around that time, it has some great recipes in it including one for brownies. My attempt is a variation on his recipe with some subtle changes, so read on to see what I did..

As your saw from the heading picture this is not a slimming treat, Organic Unsalted Butter, Unrefined Golden Sugar and lots of eggs being needed, but I was determined to include one of the ‘5 a day’ so fresh Raspberries were going to be a hidden surprise.

Before starting gather all the ingredients, a habit I have got into as it makes cooking so much easier. Switch the oven on and set to 175deg (fan),  then line a 20cm x 20cm square baking tin with butter and parchment paper, this makes removing the final brownie so much easier.

250g of Willie’s Drop’s are placed into a bowl over simmering water with 300g of unsalted butter and slowly melted, you can see the glossy mixture in the picture above, silky smooth and decadent. I used the 71% Sambirano Single Estate Madagascan which is beautiful and readily available.

6 Eggs and 3 Yolks were added to 300g of Golden Caster Sugar and processed by the trusty Kenwood Chef using the Balloon Whisk attachment. I set the beast going at full speed to create a very light, pale and airy mixture, this helps to lighten the final brownie, it took about 6-8 minutes and significantly increased the volume of the mixture.

With the Chocolate/Butter mix melted and combined, add to the Egg/Sugar mixture and gently fold in 100g of Plain Flour, this is more than the original recipe as is the extra Egg Yolk. You should end up with a smooth batter like the picture above. The next stage is to pour in about 1cm’s worth of mixture to cover the base of the tin, then place the Raspberries  as seen in the following picture.

Pour the remaining mixture gently into the tin, the mixture can dislodge the fruit so go slowly, then add more raspberries pushing them into the mixture so that they are just below the surface of the batter mix.

The Brownie/Cake mixture needs baking for about 30 minutes, then remove from the over and LEAVE IT ALONE TO COOL DOWN SLOWLY……..  If you don’t do this, when you try and remove from the tin, you will end up with  mess.

When the Brownie has cooled down, you can remove from the baking tin by gently lifting by the parchment paper, then dust with Icing sugar.

It was absolutely delicious, quite light and moist for a Brownie, I think its more cake like but the team loved it, as did several other people who where in the office at the time.

If you like chocolate, you should have a go at this, its quick to make and just scrummy……. Enjoy