Each year on December 8, brownie lovers across the nation enjoy one of their favorite baked goods on National Brownie Day.
Brownies were created in the United States at the end of the 19th century. A cross between a cookie and cake, they soon became very popular across the country.
With the chocolate brownie being the favorite, the blonde brownie runs a close second. A blondie brownie is made with brown sugar and no chocolate.
The earliest recipes for brownies comparable to those familiar to us today are found published in regional cookbooks and newspapers around the turn of the last century. The 1904 Laconia, NH Home Cookery, the 1904 Chicago, IL Service Club Cook Book, and an April 2, 1905, edition of The Boston Globe are three early examples. In 1906, Fannie Merritt Farmer published a recipe in an edition of The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.
- No one really knows the origin of brownies. The three most popular theories involve baking mistakes: adding chocolate to a batch of cookies, forgetting to add the baking powder to the batter, or leaving out the flour.
- There was a request for a dessert for a group of ladies that would be attending a fair in the late 1800s. They wanted a small cake-like dessert that could be eaten from a boxed lunch. A Chicago chef, working at the Palmer House Hotel, created the first brownie for the ladies, which featured an apricot glaze and walnuts. The Palmer House Hotel still serves their original recipe for brownies on their menu.
- The first brownie ever made, like other culinary mishaps (the sandwich, pizza, potato chip) was actually a mistake. The baker didn’t have baking powder and ended up with an unleavened fudge treat.
- No one knows where brownies got their name. One rumor is that the name comes from a 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalog that included elf shaped sweets called “brownies.” Others believe the name came from Palmer Cox’s children’s book, “The Brownies: Their Book,” which was published in 1887. This theory, however, isn’t proven. Eventually, the name was used to refer to Girl Scouts, a type of Kodak camera and a chewy cake-like sweet.
- Blonde brownies are made with brown sugar, butter and eggs, but no chocolate and typically have a cake-like texture.
- The first brownie made was not actually a brownie at all. It was a tasty treat sweetened with molasses that we now know as a blondie.
- Although cannabis is the most controversial brownie mix-in, walnut remains the most popular and legal.
- The largest brownie ever made was at the Hudson Valley Chocolate Festival and Holiday Crafts Show in Suffern, New York, in Late 2001. Using 750 lbs. of melted chocolate chips the mammoth brownie weighted in at 3,000 lbs.
- Brownie points in modern usage are a hypothetical social currency, which can be accrued by doing good deeds or earning favor in the eyes of another- often one’s superior. The origin of the term is unclear.
- According to the National Brownie Committee of America (NBCA) Americans eat approximately 1,457,966,002 in a fiscal year.
Sources:
