I appreciate your reading Between the Layers! This is a Thursday post sent to paid subscribers, and I wanted you to receive the preview so you’ll see what you’ve been missing. Paid subscribers allow me to produce creative and original posts with tested recipes. If you’re able, I’d love for you to consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work. If you’re not, email me at anne@annebyrn.com. What You Don’t Know About Brownies & Hepburn- No. 215Never put too much flour in your brownies, plus two fabulous recipes.
THE LATE ACTRESS KATHARINE HEPBURN was known for her brownies and credited two secrets to their success: She didn't put too much flour in the batter, and she was careful not to over-bake them. Hepburn used just 1/4 cup flour and advised that you pull the brownies out of the oven when a toothpick inserted in the center shows moist and fudgy crumbs - and no longer. In truth and some legend, too, these inspirational brownies once convinced a young woman to return to college and get on her path in life. More on that in a minute… I’ll stick my neck out and say brownies are the most beloved of American cakes if you ask people who don’t reside here. When I lived in England, they were the number one thing my British friends wanted me to bake, followed closely by chocolate chip cookies. And warm from the oven, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, my friends didn’t notice the gritty British flour, proving the invincibility of brownies, too!
I’ve learned you don’t get into a brownie discussion with anyone from Chicago.They’ll tell you they invented brownies. I know this because I once spoke to the Food Historians of Chicago and mentioned - just mentioned - that Boston and Philadelphia home economists, specifically Maria Howard, one of Fannie Farmer’s proteges, were working at chocolate companies on the first brownie recipe development. But Chicagoans believe, and let’s let them hold this dear, that the brownies served at that famous 1893 World Colombian Exposition, their World’s Fair, were the very first brownies ever. Draped with apricot jam, they were served in box lunches over in the ladies’ tent, and they continue to be baked at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago because the ladies’ activities were organized by one Bertha Palmer, wealthy wife of hotel owner Potter Palmer and president of the ladies' board for the Exposition who is said to have requested this dessert. (As an interesting aside, my friend and fellow Substacker Jolene Handy is researching Bertha Palmer for a book!) I don’t mean to get my Chicago friends all riled up on a random Thursday, but brownies were being mentioned in lots of places at the same time. Pre-internet, people just didn’t know about it. Could it have been that Bertha Palmer was cutting edge, the 19th century equivalent of someone today who baked the tomato feta recipe seconds after it hit TikTok? I’d like to think so.
Brownies were thought to be named after the little magical people written about in Canadian author and illustrator Palmer Cox's cartoons and poems of the 1880s.The 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue sold a candy called ‘’brownies,’’ as well as farming tools, horse buggies, Bibles, and opium. The brownies in Fannie Farmer’s landmark 1896 cookbook were "brown" only because of the recipe's generous amount of molasses and nuts. (Clearly not up on the trends! By the 1905 revision, Farmer would sneak in a little chocolate, but by then, she was late to the game.) Two 1904 cookbooks—the Service Club Cookbook of Chicago and Home Cookery of Laconia, North Hampshire—shared nearly the same recipe for Bangor Brownies, calling for 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate and what would become a formula for brownie perfection—using twice as much sugar as flour. And that’s where this gets back to Miss Hepburn... Subscribe to Anne Byrn: Between the Layers to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Anne Byrn: Between the Layers to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
|
0 comments:
Post a Comment