Ultimate Choc Brownie wins recipe competition

Ultimate Choc Brownie wins recipe competition

Classic dessert voted New Zealand’s Favourite Recipe

After two months, 571 recipes, 13,000 votes and more than a quarter of a million website page views, New Zealanders have chosen the ‘Ultimate Chocolate Brownie’ as their favourite recipe.

The delectable dessert, created by Vivian Wong of Riccarton, Christchurch, was today announced as the grand prize winner of The Search for New Zealand’s Favourite Recipe on TV One’s Breakfast show by well-known chef and competition spokesperson, Paul Jobin.

The search, sponsored by SuperValue and FreshChoice supermarkets to encourage the creativity of New Zealand home cooks, asked for recipe entries through the website www.nzfavouriterecipe.co.nz in four categories: Baking & Desserts, Main Meals, Snacks & Light Meals, and Starters and Extras. Visitors to the site then voted for their favourites and could interact with each other via the site’s online forum, as well as using their own Facebook pages to promote their recipes.

Jobin says that Vivian really went the extra mile to convince people to vote for her recipe by baking and giving away dozens of brownies to friends over the past weeks to encourage them to try it and vote for it as their favourite.

“What I love about a classic recipe like this is that it’s simple, but there are so many creative things you can do with it, and Vivian our winner certainly has,” says Jobin, who encouraged people to enter much-loved recipes that had been in families for generations.

In regard to her particular variation on this classic dessert, Vivian said, ”There are endless chocolate brownie recipes around, and I'm sure heaps of them are great, but whenever I read in the instructions: ‘melt chocolate over a simmering heat’ or something similar, all I can envisage is the stress and mess of the choc-melting process that so often ends up burnt or all over the stove.”

“The beauty of this recipe is that there is no melty-choccy going on, yet the final product is still dense, moist, and super chocolatey goodness that melts in your mouth with every bite. The addition of raspberries make it the ultimate treat - I'm often too poor to include them, but if you've got them, it makes the world of difference.”
Vivian says she has won over many hearts, solved many conflicts, and “sucked up to many important people with this recipe” and had kept it a well-hidden secret, until now.

It’s a secret that has now paid off, as Vivian now takes home the grand prize of $5000 for her winning recipe.

Prizes also went to the recipes that got the most votes in their category, plus the next ten overall runners-up. Everyone who participated was also in to win one of 100 grocery vouchers valued at $100 each.

Category winners are as follows:
• Baking & Desserts – Ultimate Chocolate Brownie
• Main Meals – Chicken Italiano
• Snacks & Light Meals – John's Ultimate Protein Post Workout Shake
• Starters and Extras – The Fluffiest Pancake Ever

“The thing we’ve said all along about this competition is that the best cooking is not necessarily found in fancy restaurants, but on the tables in our homes made by everyday cooks from great recipes that work,” says Jobin.

Winning entries can be viewed at the web site, www.nzfavouriterecipe.co.nz

ENDS

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