Which, now that I think about it, I never posted. But it went something like: how could something like a brownie evolve in America, but not in Europe? Well Gerhard, if I had to boil it down to two words, they’d be “professional pride.” For you see, ever since European communal hearths evolved from do-it-yourself […]
READ ONDorie Greenspan calls these her “French” brownies, not just because she invented them while living in Paris, but because her point of departure was French fondant (which on that side of the pond is a kind of cake). All that is beside the point to me, as I consider this recipe to be the highest […]
READ ONYes, pretty much all old-school brownie recipes had nuts in them. If you don’t like nuts, just hang on, I’ll put up a recipe without them. These are about as moist a brownie as I like. Some recipes have so little flour in them, they might as well be fudge. Not being a fudge person, […]
READ ONThere’s a small but vocal minority of brownie lovers out there who maintain to this day that chocolate brownies were invented in Bangor, Maine…the famous “Bangor Brownie.” According to one version of the story, brownies came into the world when a woman named “Brownie” baked a chocolate cake and — you guessed it — it […]
READ ONA wonderful defense, in today’s Washington Post, of garden-variety tomatoes. Is it just me, or are the voices of food sanity beginning to join into a chorus?
READ ONSo then, we know the first “brownies” (the ones without chocolate) were made in the years just preceding 1900. Fannie Farmer’s original Boston Cooking-School Cook Book contained a recipe for them, and the Sears catalog of 1897 featured them. But then when did chocolate enter the picture? That bit of the story is rather hazy, […]
READ ONHere’s a recipe for brownies that’s not so far off from early brownie recipes, save for the fact that it has a good deal more chocolate. I confess I mostly swiped it from Dorie Greenspan, but if you’re going to steal, why not steal from the best? The woman is deeply serious about brownies. Her […]
READ ONIn an effort to head off a few emails at the digital pass, I’ll tell you right now that yes, the category of (very young) Girl Scouts known as “Brownies” were named for the sprites I described below. But surely, Joe, because they’re helpful, not because they burn buildings down. All I’ll say is, you […]
READ ONWhy, an elf of course. More specifically a house elf, one which, provided it’s treated with respect and given the odd morsel of food, is wont to perform all manner of helpful household tasks. Like what? Oh, tidying up, milking the cows, churning the butter, that sort of thing. Quite the household convenience they are, […]
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