The eagerly-awaited Commercial Bay development is set to return Auckland’s city centre to its historical roots by showcasing the best of New Zealand creativity to the world. Skincare brand Aotea well and truly fits the bill with its ethical approach, focused on giving to customers and the community of Great Barrier Island.
Meet the maker, Aotea founder Tama Toki, as he shares his vision and explains why he joined the Commercial Bay community.
In just 10 years Garrett Leight has managed to create an eyewear brand with enough cool credibility to attract the stealth wealth set and red carpet regulars Kendall Jenner, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Ratajkowski and Brad Pitt. Available in Auckland at Parker & Co, Garrett Leight California Optical is designed in downtown Los Angeles but is taking on the most famous faces in the world.
We asked Leight, 36, about when he knew that his brand would take off, how lockdown is impacting his business and what it’s like to be sunglass royalty (his dad is Oliver Peoples founder Larry Leight).
What was the goal when you created GLCO?
I was born and raised in Venice Beach, California and continue to live there today with my family. The main street in Venice, Abbot Kinney, is full of creatives looking to express themselves and their work. We didn’t have a local optician in the area at the time and I knew I wanted to create eyewear for my community that resonated with their style and if successful, could resonate globally as well.
How much of an influence was your dad on the business?
My father has influenced me greatly when creating my own brand. I was grateful to have had the opportunity to work at Oliver Peoples and see firsthand how my father reverse-engineered the company. He launched the brand during the recession in the 1980s and was able to be successful by creating timeless classic designs. I ended up launching my namesake brand during the recession in late 2009 and sought him out for advice. He has over 30 years of eyewear knowledge and continues to share his passion for the field with me today.
When did you know that GLCO had really taken off?
It was a big leap of faith to start the brand and I just prayed that it would resonate with people beyond our community in Venice. It’s kind of a bittersweet memory now, but being picked up by Barney’s was probably the first time I felt like we really made it (Barney’s filed for bankruptcy in August 2019). It was the perfect shopping destination at the time and everyone wanted their brand to be sold there.
Has the brand changed over 10 years?
So much of the brand has changed and so much has stayed the same. Our collections have gotten larger and our team has grown in size, however, the mission to create timeless classic designs has stayed present. Our love of Southern California and the lifestyle here is still at the core of the brand, and can be found in everything that we design. I was thinking about this recently, and as it’s a namesake brand, I feel like it’s almost evolved in a similar way to me – as a human. There are certain things I used to care about when I was younger that I don’t care about as much now, and things I care about now that never occured to me before. It’s interesting to look at the brand from that perspective as well. From a design perspective, the frames evolve but the quality of the product remains at the forefront of our priorities.
What is the most popular style?
The first designs we created are still popular today. It’s hard to choose the most popular, but Kinney, Brooks, Hampton, and Wilson are all classic, timeless styles that are specifically asked for by name.
What music inspires you?
I’ve always loved music and funnily enough, I actually wanted to be a DJ in college. Clearly, my plans changed. The type of music I love the most is definitely reggae.
Which eyewear trend are you glad came and went?
Like fashion, eyewear trends are always evolving. I’ve always favoured discreet branding and timeless details. You’ll see that throughout all of our collections. The super over-the-top styles are a bit much and I’m glad we don’t see much of it anymore.
How did you celebrate 10 years in business?
We celebrated reaching the 10-year milestone by taking a step back and looking at everything that has made the brand what it is today. Along with the people, the designs are what anchored the business. Some of our very first styles included Brooks, an acetate square shape, and Hampton, an iconic rounded shape with a keyhole bridge. To honour them, we released an anniversary edition of both, aptly named Brooks X and Hampton X. Both frames have thicker acetate construction, glass lenses, anniversary temple stamping and a special plaque inspired by the GLCO logo. We got to modernise the frames we love and celebrate the work we’ve done up to this point.
We actually had a lot more anniversary celebrations in the works, events and different projects we were really excited about, but like the rest of the world we are having to pivot to adjust to the current global crisis. We certainly didn’t anticipate this is how the 10-year celebration would pan out, but we are staying positive and working hard to adjust as needed and make the next 10 years just as successful as the first.
Where will GL be in 10 years?
I would love to bring the GLCO lifestyle all over the world. We currently have six freestanding locations and I hope to bring our collection and retail experience to more cities. Eyewear is such a transformative accessory and nothing is more rewarding than seeing someone walk into one of our stores and leave feeling more confident with a pair of our frames. Being able to make frames that make people feel great is ultimately what I hope to do throughout the next 10 years
Appointing a home that balances the demands of a modern family with refined design sensibilities is no mean feat. After all, the chaotic reality of life with young children can often leave little time for anything more than simply getting through the day. But in this sophisticated Sydney residence, the creative minds at Luigi Rosselli Architects and Alwill Interiors managed to achieve a sense of elevated elegance without making the spaces feel sacrosanct or untouchable. While luxury certainly remains central to the identity of this home, it still retains a sense of warm comfort and is rendered inviting and liveable thanks to a shrewd use of natural light, a generous allocation of negative space that gives way to art and a base palette that is calm, considered and undeniably cool.
Working alongside the homeowner, Camilla Freeman-Topper (of fashion label Camilla & Marc), architects Jane McNeill and Luigi Rosselli approached the project by first acknowledging the heritage of the original Peppertree villa. Perched on the crest of Sydney’s Bellevue Hill, the grande dame evoked 1920s classicism with its entry loggia, impressive fireplaces and generously proportioned rooms — all elements deemed important to retain while pursuing the central aim of improving the flow from room to room and opening the home up to its garden. A practical, basement garage was added, as was an attic space, which gave rise to a magnificent new stairwell, conceived as a way to keep the additional levels connected to the rest of the house.
The stairwell, solid and sculptural with a structure reminiscent of a ribbon suspended in space, acts as a beguiling central focus. Looking up at its repetitive curves, one is offered a break from the motif of linearity present in the other elements of the home, like the parquet timber floors, minimalist straight-line light fixtures and steel-framed windows.
Enlarging the ground floor windows and framing them in black steel was crucial to the plan of connecting the residence to its garden. Designed by Myles Baldwin, the outdoor space that surrounds the villa (which includes a new swimming pool) is lush, verdant and realised with an organic, wild quality that shuns the over-manicured landscaping of old. It’s a balanced approach and one that is carried from the garden to the home’s interior.
Inside, exquisite detailing and tactile materials like marble accents, Stucco Lucido, brass metalwork, Onyx inlaid flooring and resin-based wall claddings are employed purposefully, to offer, amidst the modern touches and architectural accessories, the kind of breathing space a creative mind might need.
There seems to be more impact in what is not there, where Interior Designer Romaine Alwill has deftly employed a framework of furnishings (mixing classic and custom-made pieces) and art in a purposely sparse way — leaving it up to the owner to fill the spaces in between with the bustling of daily life.
In the garden, a pepper tree still stands, a reminder of the villa’s historic origins that, despite being given a more contemporary look, are still very much present in its character. While sculpting it to suit its modern context, the creatives behind this villa (including the client herself) constructed spaces that exemplify how rich materials and structural furnishings can, when combined cleverly with minimalist principles, result in a home that addresses the needs of the modern family with undeniable finesse.
In December last year designer Virgil Abloh, who rose to fame on the back of urban-inspired clothing with his label Off-White, declared that streetwear was over and tailoring would triumphantly return but a lot can happen in three months. The attraction of wearing comfortable and stylish sweatpants and hoodies is not going to disappear when we return to working in offices. Fortunately, the monolithic Italian menswear brand Zegna is prepared.
While Zegna continues to produce some of the finest suits for people who refuse to acknowledge casual Fridays, they have also released a collection of luxury leisure wear for those of us happy to never see an ironing board again.
Under the watchful eye of artistic director Alessandro Sartori, Zegna is producing a range of elevated basics that work Monday to Sunday, from the office to home and from dictating in your car to a relaxed dinner date. Sartori’s familiarity with casual codes was honed during his tenure overseeing the Z Zegna collections, before taking the creative reins of the entire company.
The luxury leisurewear collection first launched in 2018, taking inspiration from Oasi Zegna, the eco-museum developed by the Zegna family in Italy but today also fits in with the evolving brand’s forward approach towards masculinity.
“Masculinity is a state of mind, not a set of given rules,” the company’s manifesto says. “One thing does not make a man. Men have been learning that love is strength, kindness is power, openness is freedom. At Zegna men get undressed to be dressed, daring to bare their distinctive selves.”
There’s no better way to do that, than in deceptively simple sweatshirts using the finest Merino wools (the Zegna family own farms in New Zealand and Australia), calfskin leather jackets with cashmere and silk lining along with creased cotton drawstring sweatpants? Streetwear hasn’t died, it just got an upgrade.
Counting the likes of Azabu, Auckland Fish Market, Cassia, Gerome, Goodside, The Jefferson and Giraffe as clients (among many others), it’s fair to say that interior designer, Paul Izzard has made an indelible mark on Auckland’s hospitality scene. The spaces he creates are warm and inviting, but also manage to conjure up imaginative, innovative ways for owner-operators to keep their businesses running seamlessly while facilitating a lively, laid-back ambience for diners. His work has taken the standard of restaurant interiors in Auckland to bold new heights, and as he tells us here, it’s all about the experience.
What are the most significant ways the hospitality industry has progressed in the last few years? Hospitality and other commercial sectors have had to adapt to offer more experienced-based services. Restaurants and retail can no longer rely solely on food and service, they need to offer something more interesting. Whether it’s creating a space for live music in a restaurant or putting a bar in a retail store, when competition is coming from the likes of Uber Eats, operators need to get people off the couch and into their restaurants, and the main way to do this is by offering unprecedented experiences.
How does your experience with hospitality spaces inform the other work you do? We actually have a lot of residential clients who choose to use our services because of our restaurant expertise. If they like entertaining, for instance, we can build them an incredible at-home bar. Or if they love cooking, we focus on creating a kitchen that goes beyond the standard residential setup.
What is your main aim when conceiving a restaurant interior? Essentially, it’s about taking the core values of a restaurant and translating them into something unique. If it’s a gin cocktail bar, for example, we’ll think about how we can create the most interesting and engaging bar for customers — maybe it has a stage in the middle of it for music performances, or maybe there’s a bookable section for a cocktail degustation. There are so many options.
What do hospitality operators who come to you want from their spaces? Well, of course, they want them to be full all day! Breaking that down though, the spaces need to be rendered in a way that maximises their potential and meets the needs of both the operator and the customers, and keeps them coming back for more. From the operators’ perspective, having a good back-of-house and front-of-house flow is important to reducing staff requirements and costs, increasing overall performance and maximising seating capacity. One thing we offer our clients is not only good aesthetic design but an intimate understanding of hospitality operations, which vastly improves the outcome.
What are the biggest interior trends in the industry right now? The push for better experiences is seeing a growing desire for single venues that house multiple operators. Two recent examples that we have worked on are Auckland Fish Market and Goodside precinct at Smales Farm, both hosting collections of small eateries with communal seating and a central bar. This set up creates an experience in itself, where customers are afforded more choice from one venue, and those dining at the same table can eat from different places. The communal courtyard space also makes it easy to host things like live music events and cooking displays that create an exciting, carnival-like experience. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be opening large restaurants anymore, it just means that the restaurant model of old needs to start thinking about how it can offer a similar, multi-faceted, engaging experience.
Is there anything you wish people would stop doing in fit-outs? Using school chairs! Uncomfortable seating is an absolute no-no. Despite the fact that setting up a restaurant can incur some pretty significant costs, a design will be ruined if the budget doesn’t stretch far enough to emphasise the comfort of the customers.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face when designing for hospitality? There are so many challenges in this space — from budget to room restraints to lead times and local authority controls, but these can all be overcome with a good design process. Luckily, it’s one we have down to a fine art, having completed over 300 venues.
What do you enjoy most about doing this kind of work? Many things. One of course, is the fact that everyone can relate to what we deliver, and everyone gets to enjoy the results. Seeing people enjoying themselves in spaces that we’ve had a hand in creating is something that brings us great pleasure.
What is unique about working with hospitality owner/operators in New Zealand? One of the huge advantages New Zealand has, is that we’re a small country, so we’re lucky to be close to our provenance. We can trace where our meat comes from, we know the name of the guy who caught our fish, and can speak to the hands behind our furniture. What we create carries a sense of integrity and authenticity. At Izzard, we approach all of our designs from this place (we don’t do ‘fake’) and we’re fortunate that our fantastic clients are on the same page.
Where do you see the future of the hospitality space going? We will definitely see more multiple-venue situations, with far more choice. Recently we have been working on Harbour Eats at the new Commercial Bay development in downtown Auckland, which will see 40-or-so food venues combined under one roof. There is also a growing opportunity for smaller, more artisanal restaurants, bars and eateries as they’re cheaper to get up and running. This, of course, is better for the customer who will be afforded more vibrant and exciting choices than ever before. Burgeoning environmental concerns will see issues around sustainability continue to grow in importance, which relates back to the unparalleled provenance that hospitality operators can tap into in New Zealand. But essentially what I’m expecting is more entertainment built into the inherent design of a hospitality space, which will see us waving goodbye to stuffy boring dining rooms and will hopefully, give the customer a real reason to get out and enjoy themselves!
Anyone who says that churros are the same as doughnuts clearly does not know what they’re talking about. From the shape to the texture, churros are a completely different delicacy. They have a crispier outer layer, almost to the point where it could be explained as crunchy and taste the best when made with premium quality ingredients and taken straight out of the deep-fryer. Thanks to this recipe from home-chef and author, Unna Burch’s cookbook — The Forest Cantina and New Zealand’s favourite dairy company — Lewis Road Creamery, everyone can bite into a hot churro at its optimal level of freshness and tastiness.
Ingredients
For the churros
70g (3 ½ tablespoons / 3oz) Lewis Road Creamery Lightly Salted butter
1 cup water
1 cup flour, sifted
3 eggs beaten (+ you might need an extra)
1 litre (4 cups / ¼ gal.) canola oil
¼ cup fair trade sugar
1 tablespoon fair trade ground cinnamon
For the chocolate sauce
100g (3.5oz) milk chocolate
100g (3.5oz) dark chocolate
250ml (1 cup) Lewis Road Creamery Single cream
3 tablespoons golden syrup
Makes approximately 15 long churros (depending on the length you pipe them).
Instructions
Cut the butter into small cubes and add to a small pot with the water. Allow the butter to melt and the water to boil.
Once the water is boiling, add the flour and then lower the heat to medium/low. Quickly stir the flour in for a minute with a wooden spoon and keep stirring until the dough forms a ball and begins to stick to the bottom of the pot.
Remove from the heat and continue to beat for a minute to cool the mixture before adding eggs. Don’t rush this process as adding eggs to the hot dough will cause the eggs to scramble.
Add a pinch of salt to the dough and then the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, making sure it’s evenly incorporated. You want the batter to be smooth and slowly drop off the spoon when held at a height. If the dough is stiff and doesn’t drop, add another egg and mix again. Put the batter into a piping bag that has a star tip fitted into the end.
Heat oil in a pot or deep fryer to 170°C (340°F), testing with a candy thermometer if you have one. If you don’t have a thermometer you can test if the oil is ready by dipping the handle of a wooden spoon into the oil. Once the oil starts steadily bubbling around the handle it is ready. While the oil heats up, mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl and set aside.
To make the chocolate sauce, heat the cream in a medium-sized pot until hot but not boiling, and then remove from the heat. Chop the chocolate into small pieces so they melt faster and add to the hot cream with the golden syrup. Leave it to sit for 2 minutes, then whisk to combine so that the sauce is glossy. Pour into a serving dish and set aside.
When the oil is ready, carefully pipe 10cm (4″) lengths of batter into the oil, using a paring knife to cut the end of the batter from the nozzle. Don’t want to overcrowd the oil as it lowers the temperature, limit to piping four at once. To make teardrop shapes like the picture above, pipe a long ‘U’ shape into the oil, then press the two ends together with two knives to join them. This must be done quickly while the batter is soft as they won’t join once they become crisp. Or you can just pipe long sticks, which is easier.
Cook for 3-4 minutes, flipping over once until golden brown. Drain on paper towels to remove excess oil, and while still hot roll in the cinnamon sugar. Repeat the process until all the churros have been made. Serve with the chocolate sauce on the side as a dip.
French macarons have a hoity-toity reputation for being a finicky dessert, reserved for professional French pastry chefs exclusively. But after much trial and error, we have refined our method for baking these delicious treats down to a fine art. This recipe for Rosewater macarons will see you achieve the perfect balance of a delicate and crispy outer shell and a soft, chewy centre, all while boasting a beautiful mixture of sweetness and nuttiness. Without further ado, here’s our guide to creating the perfect French macarons at home.
Ingredients
Makes approximately 20 macarons
Avoid using cups to measure for this recipe. Scales guarantee more accuracy.
– 4 large egg whites (room temperature)
– 70g of caster sugar
– 230g pure icing sugar
– 120g of ground almonds
– Pinch of salt
– Pink gel food colouring
– Piping bag (2 large zip-lock bags are also fine)
For the rosewater ganache filling
– 250g of white chocolate buttons
– 100mL of Lewis Road Creamery double cream
– 1 tbsp of rosewater
– Pink gel food colouring
Method
1) Preheat the oven to 150°C fan-baked.
2) Line a baking sheet with baking paper.
3) Blend your almond meal in a blender or food processor for a super fine texture to avoid clumps.
4) Sift the blended almond meal, icing sugar and salt into a medium-sized bowl and set aside. If there are still any large clumps of almond meal remaining, dispose of them.
5) Take a larger bowl for your egg whites and caster sugar, but make sure to crack the eggs in a separate bowl to ensure no shells get into the batter.
6) Begin beating your egg and sugar mixture with an electric mixer, starting off on medium speed and gradually working your way up to a high speed. You’re going to be beating this mixture for slightly over 10 minutes — until you can turn the bowl upside down and the stiff mixture doesn’t move.
7) Add in your gel food colouring. You want to avoid liquid food colouring as the consistency can cause your macarons to become flat. You also want to make sure the colour of your batter is pigmented as it will lighten in the oven. If you’re going for a pale pink, as this recipe suggests, make sure your batter is hot pink. Continue beating for 1 more minute, until the colour is fully incorporated.
8) Take the bowl of ground almonds, icing sugar and salt and sift it again, into the bowl of eggs, caster sugar and colouring.
9) This is the most important step and the one where most people go wrong. It’s crucial to not overmix or undermix your batter and one fold makes a significant difference, so pay close attention. With a rubber spatula, scrape the edges of your bowl and fold your spatula into the centre of the bowl. It should take approximately 40 folds and you want to stop at the point where your batter is smooth yet thick. Every now and then, lift your spatula out of the bowl and if the batter slowly falls off, that’s when to stop. If it’s still stiff enough to hold its form, give it a few more folds and if it’s runny like pancake batter, you have over mixed and you’ll need to start over.
10) When the batter is perfectly mixed, pour it into a piping bag. Try to not fiddle with the batter too much as you could change the texture. Make a small incision at the tip of the bag.
11) Pipe your macarons onto your baking sheet in circles, giving each a diameter of approximately 3cm.
12) Bang your tray of un-baked macarons on the bench to see the circles flatten slightly and to make the air bubbles rise to the surface. This is very important to help prevent the macarons from cracking in the oven.
13) Leave the tray to sit and set for approximately 15 minutes before placing in the oven.
14) Put the tray in the oven for approximately 20 mins. Avoid opening the oven door if you can, as it will impact the macarons’ ability to bake evenly.
15) Once you can effortlessly take the macaron shells off the baking paper with no residue batter left behind, your macarons are ready. Set aside to cool before removing from the tray.
16) To make rosewater ganache, put the white chocolate buttons and cream in a heatproof bowl and set over a saucepan of simmering water. Make sure that the bottom of bowl does not touch the water.
17) When the chocolate has melted, add the rosewater essence and food colouring and stir well. Make sure your pink ganache is lighter than the shells.
18) Set aside for 30-40 minutes or until the ganache has thickened.
19) Place your ganache into a piping bag and pipe onto the cooled shell bases. Place another macaron shell on top.
Enjoy!
If you haven’t come across the term HIIT at some point over the past few years, then you’ve evidently been living under a rock. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), is the cardio workout which alternates short bursts of intense exercise with slightly less intense recovery periods, and it’s been heralded as the holy grail of exercise plans. Fat busting, endurance building and metabolism boosting, HIIT workouts seemed like a sweaty miracle. That was, at least, until we realised one terrible discerning factor: HIIT workouts are goddamn hard work. Hernia-inducing, stomach-wrenching hard work. Well, fellow slackers, there might just be an answer.
Say hello to LIIT: everybody’s new favourite acronym. Lower-intensity interval training, HIIT’s smaller, quieter, more relaxed and far more forgiving sibling, is making waves in the wellness circuit thanks to its more accessible and less intimidating nature. The notion is very much the same, high intervals followed by rest periods, except the high intervals aren’t quite as horrifically intense and the rest periods are far longer — the intensity during a LIIT session is never above a sprint. (Amen.) Now, to be clear, LIIT workouts aren’t a walk in the park. Muscles will burn, pores will perspire, and there’s a good chance you’ll still be looking forward to the end with the same longing as before. But the slower, lighter approach of strength-training sections interspersed by longer breaks, means that you’re not absolutely despising your workout while it’s happening. In addition to it being generally more accommodating, LIIT is much more sustainable long term due to it carrying a lower risk of injury. As such, many fitness experts have touted it as one of the safest ways to both build and maintain lean muscle.
So, what’s the catch? You have to be willing to give up a little more of your precious time, I’m afraid. LIIT still offers the same ability to torch calories, but if you’re looking to wave goodbye to the same amount as you would during a high intensity blitz, prepare to double your time. Not all is lost, however. What you lose in idle free time (what would you have been doing with that extra 30 minutes, anyway?) you gain elsewhere. Not only will you receive the same aesthetic benefits that you would from a HIIT session, but your general fitness will improve ten-fold, including improved cardiovascular endurance, increased mobility and heightened strength. In addition to that, LIIT has been described as a far more mindful approach to fitness, thanks to its slower pace and lack of stress.
LIIT serves as a great alternative for a range of fitness levels, whether you’re a beginner, just getting back into the fitness game after a workout hiatus, or recovering from an injury — but most of all, it suits those who want to just take things a little easier.
Try it at home:
Jog at a moderate pace for two to three minutes, before briskly walking
for five minutes.
Carry out a circuit of three to four rounds of 10 push-ups, 10 squats, and a 30-second plank. Take a 90-second rest between sets.
Jog for 90 seconds on the treadmill before carrying out a walking recovery for three to five minutes.
Carry out three to four sets of 10 kettlebell swings, 10 single arm dumbbell rows per arm, and 20-second side planks on each side. Take 90-second rests between sets.
Meet Slow Lit, the growing podcast genre that will knock you out quicker than two sleeping pills and a mug of hot cocoa. While plugging in to switch off may seem like a contradiction, thanks to uninteresting plotlines and maladroit storytelling, slow literature distracts you from the stuff that usually keeps you awake without being interesting enough to hold your attention. (Read: the digital equivalent of a bottle of melatonin.) Press play on one of these five snooze-inducers and we can guarantee you’ll find it impossible to keep your eyes open.
Sleep With Me
Boring you to slumber with long-winded tangents and unimportant drivel on an array of bizarre topics, Sleep With Me — narrated by the monotonous, gravelly tones of former librarian Drew Ackerman — gives a whole new meaning to the term snore-fest.
Calm
Author Phoebe Smith’s grown-up bedtime stories for the Calm app take you on uneventful journeys around the globe, each narrated by the silvery voices of guest speakers (including Stephen Fry and Matthew McConaughey).
Miette’s Bedtime Story
Distracting without being too stimulating, Miette’s Bedtime Story is the podcast answer to comforting white noise. In soothing, purring tones, the podcast recites some of the world’s best short fiction tales, from treasured classics to unknown miniature masterpieces.
Headspace
Ensuring that you’ll be counting your zzzz’s quicker than you can say ‘goodnight,’ Headspace’s new ‘Sleepcasts’ series uses subtly changing ‘unique audio experiences’ that combine visualisation and sound to lure you to dreamland.
Sleep Whispers
Encompassing poems, meditations, bedtime stories and encyclopedia-type ‘Whisperpedia’ episodes, Sleep Whispers is brimming with whispery, relaxing content to ensure you slip into slumber in no time.
Prepare yourself to bake the fudgiest, most decadent brownies you’ll ever taste. But be warned — these morsels are seriously rich, so consume with caution.
Ingredients
Makes approximately 24 brownies
– 225 grams of Lewis Road Creamery unsalted butter
– 1 block of Whittaker’s Dark Chocolate
– 1 block of Whittaker’s Milk Chocolate
– 1 tbsp of instant coffee powder
– 1 cup of cocoa powder (preferably dutch-processed)
– ½ cup of dark brown sugar
– 2 cups of white sugar
– 2 tsp of vanilla extract
– 2 tsp of sea salt
– Sea salt flakes
– 6 eggs (room temperature)
– 1 cup of standard flour
Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180°C fan-baked and line a large baking tray with butter and baking paper before going over the paper with more butter — this will keep the bottom layer of your brownies moist and lend a slight, caramelised flavour.
2. In a heat-proof bowl, combine ¾ of the Whittaker’s dark chocolate block (broken into pieces), ¼ cup of cocoa powder and the instant coffee. Set aside.
3. Take a saucepan and melt your butter over a medium heat, until it starts to simmer. Be careful not to burn it.
4. Once the butter reaches a simmering point, pour it over the bowl of chocolate, cocoa powder and instant coffee and let the hot butter soften the chocolate for a few minutes. When the chocolate looks slightly melted, take a fork or small whisk and mix all the ingredients together until they form a ganache. Set aside.
5. As the ganache cools, take a large mixing bowl and beat the white sugar, brown sugar and eggs for as long as 15 minutes. Incorporating as much air as possible will result in a soft, moist brownie.
6. When your egg and sugar mixture looks like thick pancake batter, add in your vanilla extract and beat for 2 more minutes.
7. Now take your ganache and pour that into the egg, sugar and vanilla mixture and keep mixing until it’s fully incorporated.
8. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, salt and the remaining ¾ cup of your cocoa powder and then slowly incorporate this into your wet mixture. It’s important to add the flour mixture gradually in order to achieve a more even and thoroughly mixed batter.
9. Mix until the flour has been entirely incorporated.
10. Before you pour the batter into the pre-prepared pan, take the remaining ¼ block of Whittaker’s Dark chocolate and the entire block of Creamy Milk chocolate and chop them into chunks. Take these chunks and spread them on the base of your pan.
11. Evenly distribute the batter over the top of the chocolate chunks and evenly across the pan before putting it in the oven.
12. After 20 minutes, take the brownies out and sprinkle sea salt flakes over the top, before putting them back in the oven for another 25 minutes.
13. After being in the oven for a total of 45 minutes, take the brownies out and let them cool completely. Ignore the technique of sticking a toothpick in to see if they’re ready — these brownies are so fudgy that the toothpick will never come out clean.
14. When the brownies have completely cooled, get a knife and cut them into squares. Keep a paper towel on hand to wipe your knife after each cut as the fudgy batter will stick.
Enjoy!
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