Mom's Brownies

A little bit of history: While the first brownie recipes were published and variations began to evolve in the first years of the 20th century, it took until the Roaring '20s for the brownie to become "the bee's knees" of baked chocolate treats, a position it maintains today.

Culinary historians have traced the first cake "brownie" to the 1906 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, edited by Fannie Merritt Farmer. This recipe is an early, less rich and chocolaty version of the brownie we know today, utilizing two squares of melted Baker's chocolate. The recipe proportions are similar to her 1896 chocolate cookie recipe, except that the brownie recipe uses substantially less flour and calls for baking the batter in a seven-inch square pan.

The name "Bangor Brownie" appears to have been derived from the town of Bangor, Maine, which an apocryphal story states was the hometown of a housewife who created the original brownie recipe. Maine food educator and columnist Mildred Brown Schrumpf was the main proponent of the theory that brownies were invented in Bangor. While The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (2007) refuted Schrumpf's premise that "Bangor housewives" had created the brownie, citing the publication of a brownie recipe in a 1905 Fannie Farmer cookbook, in its second edition, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2013) said it had discovered evidence to support Schrumpf's claim, in the form of several 1904 cookbooks that included a recipe for "Bangor Brownies".

For more history, see The Palmer House Brownie (and the History of Brownies)

Mom's Recipe for Brownies

These are my favorite brownies, maybe because I grew up with them. Although I do remember a bake sale for school that I made these brownies for. The person who bought them loved them and asked for more. I went home and baked another batch. They are not real gooey and sweet, but rich in chocolate taste with just the right amount of sweetness due to the dusting of confectioner's sugar on top.

If you like thicker brownies, double the recipe and bake in a 13 x 9 inch pan instead of the 9 x 9 inch pan used in the recipe below.

1/3 cup butter (5 1/3 Tbsp.)
2 1-ounce squares unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, at room temp
2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 tsp. vanilla
confectioner's sugar for dusting

Grease a 9 x 9 inch square baking pan. Preheat the oven to 350° F.

Melt the butter and the chocolate in a saucepan; let cool [enough so it doesn't cook the eggs]. Place in a mixing bowl and mix in [with a hand mixer] the sugar [the sugar should melt somewhat], then the 2 eggs. Beat well. Stir in the flour, baking powder, salt, walnuts and vanilla just until the flour is incorporated.

FMM: Last time I made these I baked them for 12 minutes. They were more moist than I remember them and very thin. I took them out when the brownies were puffed and just starting to pull away from the edge of the pan. I think I need to double the recipe and bake them a little longer. Or maybe I used to mix them with a hand mixer before adding the dry ingredients and nuts.

Taste of Home says this: "If you prefer fudgy brownies, mix until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined. Overmixing allows more air into the batter, which will give you lighter, cake-like brownies instead of dense, rich ones. On the flip side, if you do want your brownies to be cakey, beat the eggs more."

Pour the batter into the baking pan and smooth out with a spatula. Bake until the brownies have just set - about 15 - 17 minutes. They will start to puff and pull away from the edge of the pan. Pull them from the oven at this point. They should not start to brown around the edges. Do not overbake or they will be dry.

For cake-like brownies: Bake them until you see just a few moist crumbs on a toothpick inserted into the center. Brownies keep cooking after you remove them from the oven, so you’ll end up with an overcooked batch if you wait until there are no crumbs at all.

Once the brownies have cooled, dust with confectioner's sugar and cut into squares. Cut in half down the middle, then cut each half in half to give you 4 strips of brownies. Turn the pan and cut across the strips in the same way so you end up with 16 squares.

Store in a jar or other container with a lid which will keep them moist.

Makes 16 brownies