I love chocolate brownies and I don’t know how come I never tried to make them before. When I was living in England, chocolate brownies and vanilla ice cream was always my choice of dessert. Maybe it was so easy to get them that I couldn’t be bothered to make it at home? I don’t know but now I decided to give a try. And guess what? It’s such an easy recipe that I don’t know why I haven’t done it before!
When searching for a chocolate brownies recipe, I realised that there are hundreds out there. How on hearth am I going to just decide on one? Faith came to rescue me 🙂 I turned Food Network on, and Mary Berry was showing how to make her easy recipe for chocolate brownies. Decided! Let me follow this recipe.
I tried to find out the origin of chocolate brownies. There’s lots of versions but most evidence points to one source: Chefs at Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel, who created the tasty treat for the World Columbian Exposition of 1893.
The story goes like this: Bertha Palmer, the wife of Palmer hotel owner Potter Palmer, was president of the Ladies Board for Managers for Exposition. When organizers of the event asked her to create a dessert especially for the boxed lunches at the Women’s Pavilion, Palmer went to her hotel’s pastry chefs and gave them the task of creating a dessert that was easier to eat than a piece of pie and smaller than a layer cake that could easily be served in boxed lunches. The result was a brownie made with double the chocolate normal brownies use, walnuts, and an apricot glaze that’s still made at the hotel to this day.
But there’s no evidence the Palmer House desserts were called brownies. The first person to put a recipe for “brownies” in a cookbook was Fanny Farmer, who adapted her cookie recipe to be baked in a rectangular pan, in the 1896 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. But: that recipe contained no chocolate! Farmer had basically made what we today call a Blondie. Then, in the late 1890s, the Kansas City Journal, advertised chocolate brownies—the first definitive reference to chocolate and brownies together.
The first known recipe for chocolate brownies appeared in Machias Cookbook, a Maine community-sourced cookbook, in 1899. The recipe features chocolate, flour, milk, baking soda—all the relevant parts of a brownie. Then, in 1904, The Club of Chicago published a cookbook with a recipe for Bangor Brownies. Finally, in 1906, Farmer published an updated version of her cookbook that included a blondie recipe and a brownie recipe, both called brownies. After that, the recipes started spreading nationally, and eventually, brownies conquered the world!
Chocolate brownies
Ingredients
- 275 g butter softened
- 375 g caster sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 75 g cocoa powder
- 100 g self raising flour
- 100 g plain chocolate chips
Instructions
- For this recipe you will need a 30x23x4 cm tray bake or roasting tin
- Preheat the oven - 180C
- Cut a rectangle of baking paper to fit the base and sides of the baking tin.
- Grease the tin and then line it with the paper, pushing it into the corners.
- Measure all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix with a hand-held electric mixer until evenly blended.
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, scraping the sides of the bowl to remove all of it.
- Spread the mixture gently to the corners of the tin and level the surface.
- Bake for 40-50 mins, until the brownies have a crusty top and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Allow the brownies to cool in the tin and then cut into 24 squares.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar and enjoy!
Notes
Can’t go wrong with brownies! I love how simple the ingredient list is too.
I was surprised how easy it is to make…
Yum! I love brownies and those look delicious!!
Thank you 🙂
They were really good!!!
Chocolate brownies are my obsession and they never seem to turn out when I make them myself. Will definitely give this recipe a shot. It looks delicious and not too difficult.
I had never tried it before because I though there must be some trick to make them good. Then I found this really easy recipe and it comes really nice 🙂
I want all the brownies! ?
These look delicious and really easy! I think I’ll give them a try the next time my nieces are over for the weekend.
I’m sure they will love it 🙂
Mmmmm they sound so bloody good.
They tasted really good too 🙂
I need to make these brownies 🙂 They sound super good (and addictive haha)
Oh they were really good 🙂 Let me know how yours come up…
These sound delicious!
Thank you
Who knew brownies had been around for that long! Nothing better than a brownie with vanilla bean ice-cream. Yum!
I love to find out the origin of the food I cook… And I get to fin out really interesting stuff 🙂
Wow delicious.. Love your blog..
Thank you so much 🙂
Will try this out! I am always on the lookout for new brownie recipes! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, my pleasure 🙂