Our premiere edition of The American Food Movement blog features a vintage recipe for what else? Dessert first, of course! None other than beloved brownies!! And the invention of this iconic recipe remains clouded in mystery to this day…a truly American recipe, thought up, developed and evolved right here in the USA! What better way to start than with quite possibly the most favorite dessert of all time in American Heritage cuisine?
Nonnie’s Brownie Recipe…
4 oz unsweetened chocolate melted
11 T butter
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
4 eggs; beaten
2 cups sugar
1 t vanilla
1 cups nuts; chopped – optional
Combined melted chocolate with butter and blend well. Sift flour, salt, baking powder and set aside. Beat eggs, vanilla and add sugar gradually, beating until very light. Add dry ingredients and nuts. Spread about 1/2 inch deep in greased shallow pan. Bake at 350 – check at 15 minutes; bake no longer than 17 minutes. (The Harty family version doubles this and bakes it in a large pan.)
Frost with Hershey cocoa recipe –
Richard and his mother Marie in front of the boyhood home of Carlito Evangelista, his grandfather. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1912, at the age of 17.
Angela Marie Evangelista Harty, known as Marie, had a big secret that only the family knew about this recipe…make it double and bake it only in her one special pan. The origin of the pan is unclear, but from the picture her son Rich has provided it appears to be a sort of restaurant style heavy duty baking tray or broiler pan with deeper than usual sides for a standard baking sheet. Marie insisted the brownies would not turn out right unless this one pan was utilized. So, as the kids got older and began to establish their own homes and lives, the pan began to be passed around for one or another to bake a batch. There was just one rule about it…it had to be returned to Mom. Here is Rich’s story behind the recipe…
“The brownie recipe is special because of the brownie pan…the pan is the family brownie pan, and I inherited it by accident. 55 plus years ago, my mom used an old broiler pan to make a double batch of brownies. They turned out amazing, better than the single batch. She would continue to double the recipe, but no other pan would have the same result. My aunt got mad because she thought my mom was leaving out ingredients on purpose. The pan never, ever left my mom’s sight. If it left the house, it was brought back that night. Until the father’s day seven years ago, my mom was sick, so, my sister picked up the pan and brought it to her house. I work near my parent’s home, so she brought it to me to bring back. Except, I was going out of town, and never got around to it. That weekend after July 4th, my mom had a stroke. Guy, my partner, and I flew back from NC, and went straight to the hospital. My mom was just barely with it still, and I sat on her bed and said, “mom, I have the brownie pan!” and she smiled out of her right side, and nodded. I can still see her face today… So, the recipe which must be made just right and cooked for just so long is still made by me…homemade frosting too. So the recipe is just part of it…it is the pan too. I guess I have just found myself on the cutting room floor. Why would you possibly include a recipe that only one pan in the whole world can make them taste just right?….ha. We can still include, maybe someone else has the same 60 year old broiler pan – Rich”
We may not have the same pan but we can try the recipe. The American brownie may have originated in Chicago, home of the Harty family, at none other than the famed Palmer House. Bertha Palmer, socialite and wife of the hotel owner, asked the head chef to make a small, easy to pack dessert for box lunches she could take to the Chicago World Columbian Exhibition in 1894. He came up with a small, cake like version with an apricot glaze. But it was not labeled a ‘brownie’, yet is served to this day at the hotel from the original recipe. Later in the 19th century and early 20th century, recipes cropped up in the form of a molasses cake in Fannie Farmer’s early cookbook in 1896 in Boston, a more modern day brownie in 1904 in the Home Cookery in Laconia, NH, and the Service Club Cook Book in Chicago, IL, the Boston Globe in 1905 and a revised version in Fannie Farmer’s 1906 edition. Finally, the type of brownie recipe we know today was first published in Lowney’s Cook Book as the Bangor Brownie, a nod to Bangor, Maine. Today’s brownie recipes are traditionally cake-like or denser fudgey, semi-sweet, cocoa or dark chocolate, nuts or no nuts, powdered sugar topping or fudge frosting or no or many other variations, including one from the fifties with a marshmallow filling. “The perfect cookie, usually baked in a pan and cut into bars like miniature cakes.”. The blondie is supposedly a vanilla version of a brownie, but true American cooks would never consider the recipes similar.