Dan Pengelley's Brownies

This is the brownie recipe of the multi-talented Daniel Pengelly, Court Jester and cook.

You can see what Dan looks like and find out when he's performing, on the Court Jesters Website. Encouragingly, despite cooking and eating the below you can see that he is more Johnny Depp than Augustus Gloop.

Here is the recipe, in Dan's own words

250g butter
2 cups of white sugar
5 eggs (four big ones)
2 teaspoons Vanilla essence
2/3 cup of cocoa
1 cup of flour
1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 block of dark whittakers chocolate

Add water to cocoa-enough to mix into paste (not runny) and vanilla essence and leave to refresh.

Whisk butter and sugar together- I say whisk and when I do it properly it comes out like sponge...

Add eggs one at a time (recipe can get too eggy so don't think you have to use 5 eggs!)

Then add cocoa mixture and mix.

Then flour, baking powder+soda, salt and mix.

Put into lightly oiled and papered tin- 30cm x20cm or thereabouts - or slice tray (but has to be 2 inches high)

Break up chocolate (as small as possible) over top this will melt through cake and end up in the bottom!

Oven 175 celcius for 32 minutes (well 32 in my oven at least-35 will burn it in my old house!)

Be warned this cake is deadly in the wrong hands - and never ever ice unless you want to kill with calories!

Some notes-
1) Watch eggs - if to much I find the cream mixture splits
2) I say whittakers chocolate cause it works- but cooking choclate does the trick or raspberries. I used Cadbury's and the fat came out of choc and tasted like lumps of condensed milk!
3) Cooking time depends on your level of moisture preference!

And there you have it!

A note from Rachel again for non New Zealanders.

Whittakers is a cult chocolate brand, famous for their peanut slabs. In the UK, I'd use Green and Black's or maybe Lindor dark.

Anywhere in Europe I'd use the 50-75% cocoa solids chocolate you can get for a song (well a euro or two)at LIDL. Best chocolate bargain around!

An interesting chocolate fact: Dan mentions he used Cadbury's chocolate. He would have used the version sold and made for the New Zealand market. I understand they use a different recipe in Australia, where the chocolate needs to have a higher melting point, due to the higher temperatures it's transported and stored at. When I was in Australia, Cadbury's chocolate seemed a little crunchy to me - and I was told this is the reason. I'm not sure how either compares to the chocolate sold in Britain - more like the NZ formulation I think.

I'm not planning exhaustive testing though...Green and Black's Maya Gold is my chocolate of choice (emergencies only!). Not only does it taste great, it's also organic and more importantly fair trade.