Willie takes the cake

Published Aug 11, 2011

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Better than an orgasm - and you don’t have to hug it afterwards. That comment comes from a friend who could not resist taking a large forkful of my version of Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s Cloud Forest Chocolate Cake (recipe below).

The cake, which sat in his kitchen overnight, was reducing in size rapidly as one person after the next sliced into it and went into raptures.

I baked the divinely decadent death-by-chocolate flourless cake textured with ground almonds - the first cake I’ve baked in probably 25 years and delicious enough to inspire me to keep baking - under the watchful eye of the engaging BBC Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory star during a hands-on workshop at the Good Food & Wine Show in Durban.

The name “cloud forest” was inspired by the 400ha farm in cloud forest in part of the Henri Pittier National Park in Venezuela, which Harcourt-Cooze bought in 1995 with his then wife, Tania.

If you’ve seen the show (a rerun has just started on BBC Lifestyle), you’ll know that this is where the couple started making chocolate and having children.

The real-life plot included near-bankruptcy, drama, stress and, finally, the creation of sublime 100 percent chocolate produced in a small factory Harcourt-Cooze built in a converted chicken shed in Devon.

During the cloud cake bake-off, Harcourt-Cooze - who keeps his cool and his humour when stoves and the mic don’t work and cake tins are the wrong size - tells his audience that he adds chocolate to almost everything he cooks. It should be 100 percent chocolate if it’s going into a savoury dish.

“There’s one great easy thing that isn’t in either of my books, which is what I have for breakfast every day,” he says. “I make toast and spread it with mashed avocado. I fry a couple of eggs (often duck eggs) and put them on top. Then I add either a sprinkling of chilli or Tabasco and grate a little 100 percent cacao over the top. It’s delicious.”

Chilli, he says, opens up the taste buds and lifts many dishes. And finely grated chocolate, he suggests, should be thought of as a condiment, like salt.

A guiding principle, he tells me when we sit down to speak, sipping on cappuccinos I buy us from the coffee stand, where he is immediately asked to taste and give his verdict on a chocolate line they’re importing, is that casseroles and sauces will almost always benefit.

“If you're doing a roast, adding a little cacao to the gravy is a great way to start. It gives a real depth of flavour to sauces and stews, and enriches gravy.”

He says London-based Michelin chef Marco Pierre White is making chocolate gravy and even adding chocolate to his jus.

It was Harcourt-Cooze’s first time in Durban - though he had participated in Good Food shows in Cape Town and Joburg. He says he has a sense of being in South America and feels at home.

“I think the lush vegetation and the sea remind me of Venezuela (where he still grows beans, retains his house and lives some of the time).”

He’s staying at the Elangeni and, from his room, he can hear the sound of the waves, which also makes him think of Venezuela, where he and his ex lived on the beaches for six months.

They grew apart, he says. “She wasn’t really ever interested in the business. We parted amicably. It has been a little tough on the children (Sophie, 11, William, 10 and Evie, 7).”

They live partly with their mother and partly on the farm in Devon with him. And kids living in chocolate heaven? “Just a way of life,” he says. “Evie sometimes calls herself Evie Wonka, but really it’s how they’ve grown up and it’s just the norm.”

Harcourt-Cooze, the son of a Burmese father and an Irish mother, is passionate about his chocolate.

You could call him a chocolatier. But he is quick to describe the difference between a chocolatier who makes chocolates (plural) and one who makes chocolate. The world is filled with chocolatiers making chocolates. That is, adding flavours and moulding chocolates from chocolate that they buy.

He, however, seeks out the beans with his focus on flavour, not price. He buys directly from the farmers, which gives them a better deal than Fair Trade, and he makes chocolate.

To delight in the antics of Willie Harcourt-Cooze, check out the videos on his Monty Pythonesque website, williescacao.com/

His books, Chocolate Factory Cookbook and Willie’s Chocolate Bible, focus on the versatility, both sweet and savoury, of the magical cocoa bean.

If you can’t find his chocolate at Woolworths, he requests that you call Woolies and ask for it.

And to see more of him on TV, Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory series one is screening on BBC Lifestyle every Sunday at 7.50am from September 11.

Points to chew on ...

1. In October he is releasing his first African chocolate bar, from Sierra Leone. “Eighty-five percent of the world’s chocolate comes from Africa, so I wanted to make an African chocolate. I’ve been developing it for two years. The chocolate is fairly robust and I’m doing a chocolate bar with ginger and lime.”

2. “I’m very hands-on and still roast all the beans. I work seven days a week.You know, sometimes I don’t know how.”

3. “The BBC shows you’re seeing are repeats. I just did a little cooking thing with Jamie Oliver, though. He made churro (like Spanish donuts). I made the hot chocolate to dip them in.”

4. “So much of what is sold as chocolate is not. It’s a billion-dollar business where you get manufacturers who swop cocoa butter for vegetable fat. The latest thing is putting in fine air particles - not as in Aero, but microscopic air bubbles so the bar looks the same size when it’s not. That’s all about money. I’m all about flavour.”

5. “I have eight 100 percent cylinder-shaped chocolates — from Madagascar, Indonesia, Colombia, Peru, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The 100 percent bars are for cooking. I make five ‘sweet’ bars ranging from 69 to 72 percent. And I’m working on a chocolate dessert line.”

6. “We’re about making cacao that reflects the flavour profile of the bean. Flavour is influenced by three things: the genetics of the bean; post-harvest, which is the fermentation and drying of beans; and the chocolatier.”

7. He tests, tastes, smells and “have my finger in it all day long. An aphrodisiac? I think it releases endorphins, gives you a feeling of well being. Anything that makes you feel good can make you feel sexy, if that’s what you mean”.

Cloud Forest Chocolate Cake

Willie says: “This is the king of cakes. You can cut out the icing and serve the cake lightly dusted with icing sugar or cocoa powder.” Serves 12

180g 100 percent cacao, finely grated

250g unsalted butter

6 eggs

50g light muscovado sugar

125g castor sugar

100g ground almonds

For the ganache icing:

250ml double cream

75g golden castor sugar

90g cacao, finely grated

Equipment: 25cm springform cake tin.

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Lightly grease the cake tin, then line with baking paper.

2. Melt the cacao and butter together in a heatproof bowl. Set over a pan of gently simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl is not in contact with the water. Remove from the heat and set aside.

3. Beat the eggs with the muscovado and castor sugar in a large bowl until pale and doubled in volume. Stir in the melted cacao and butter mixture, then carefully fold in the ground almonds until evenly mixed through.

4. Tip the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes, or until slightly risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave in the tin on a wire rack to cool.

5. To prepare the icing, place the cream and sugar in a pan over low heat and bring just to the point of boiling. Remove from the heat and stir in the grated cacao until melted and evenly mixed through. Set aside to cool.

6. When the cake is cold, place on a serving plate or cake board and spread the cooled icing evenly over the top and sides. Keep at room temperature until ready to serve. Don’t store in the fridge because the cake and icing can become too hard. - Sunday Tribune

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