I can't pass up a brownie recipe.
| Bangor Brownies ¼ cup shortening 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla ¼ cup chopped nuts ⅛ tsp salt 1 cup sugar 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted ¼ cup milk 1 cup flour 1 tsp baking powder ¼ cup chopped nuts, if desired Heat oven to 350°. Cut a piece of paper to fit the bottom a 9" square pan. Then coat the pan with cooking spray. Press the paper into the bottom of it, eliminating as many bubbles underneath as possible. Spritz the top of the paper with cooking spray. Cream the shortening until softened. Add the sugar and eggs. Beat by hand for one minute, or with a mixer until fluffy. Add remaining ingredients all at once. Beat vigorously by hand for four minutes, or with an electric mixer until thoroughly mixed. Pour into the prepared pan and bake 30-35 minutes, or until the center barely springs back when lightly pressed with your fingertip. When cooled, top with chocolate fudge frosting, or with white icing flavored very generously with vanilla. Note: If desired, you can substitute 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder for the chocolate. Add an additional two tablespoons of shortening to the amount already used in the recipe. To really bring out the chocolate flavor, melt all of the shortening, getting it very hot. Then whisk in the cocoa. Let stand until it re-solidifies, then begin the recipe.
Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive
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When I first read this recipe, I thought it looked more like a cake than brownies. Perhaps it took a while for brownies to become the fudgy squares we know and inhale today.
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| Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive |
As I always do nowadays, I bloomed the cocoa powder. That is just a fancy way of saying I melted the shortening, got it really hot (as opposed to barely warm enough to go runny), stirred in the cocoa, and let it cool. It brings out so much more of chocolate flavor than just stirring it in-- just like soaking dried herbs in oil overnight.
Bloomed cocoa aside, our well-creamed mixture was very sandy. It looked more like the beginning of a crumb pie crust than the first step of a recipe that begins with "Cream the shortening and add sugar."
I had misgivings about how dry this recipe was. Usually, the butter-shortening mixture looks like this before adding an egg, not after. But I figured that if I wanted to make something that comes out like everything I've made before, I wouldn't be using a different recipe.
The directions now say to "add the remaining ingredients and beat four minutes." I didn't know if we were supposed to dump everything in at once, or if we were supposed to alternately add the flour and the liquids (as one does with most cakes). On the one hand, the spice cake we made a while ago tells us to pile everything into the bowl and start stirring and it came out fine, as did Mrs. Wilson's one-egg cake. On the other hand, when we tried this on a normal cake recipe, it overflowed the pan and turned into a goopy mess. As a reminder:
Back to the brownies: I checked the other recipes on the same page to see how detailed their directions are. Did Mrs. Mary Martensen always write out every step, or did she tend to omit the obvious? After all, these were originally printed in the newspaper. Every column-inch was a precious resource.
Most of the other recipes in this book are pretty detailed, even if they're so terse that a single word can add ten minutes of prepwork. So I think Mrs. Mary Martensen literally meant to throw it all in a bowl and start stirring. After all, the Depression was on. Time is money, and people didn't have a lot of either one.
The resulting batter seemed halfway between a cake and brownies. It also tasted insanely good. As I held up the mixer and let the batter drip off the beaters, the chocolate ribbons made me swoon. I had a really hard time getting this into the oven instead of eating it all.
After leveling off the batter, I used the spoon to make a swirl on top. I didn't know whether the batter would flatten itself in the oven, but either way it would (hopefully) look pretty. Also, I know the cookbook calls these brownies, but this did not feel like brownie batter to me.
We are told to top these with fudge frosting, but I really like brownies with white icing. I think the contrast between the vanilla on top and the chocolate below is exquisite.
I'm not sure where the line is between cake and brownies, but this recipe is squatting right on it. Like any good devil's food cake, it has just enough chocolate flavor to almost have too much. Clearly, anyone making Mrs. Mary Martensen's brownies in 1933 would not have to add underwhelming chocolate to all the other miseries of an economic collapse. I wouldn't tell anyone that these are supposed to be brownies, but if someone called them brownies I wouldn't disagree. I would also definitely make these again.
