Brownies

The brownie is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century American invention, though its exact birth is contested. The often-repeated story credits the kitchen of Chicago's Palmer House Hotel, which says a chocolate-and-walnut bar with apricot glaze was created there for box lunches at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition; the hotel still serves a version, but there is no contemporary documentation for the 1893 date, so the claim is best treated as legend. What is documented is that Fannie Farmer printed a recipe called 'Brownies' in 1896, though hers contained no chocolate, and that the first true chocolate-brownie recipes appear in community cookbooks around 1904, in Laconia, New Hampshire, and in Chicago. The bar spread quickly through such recipe collections to become a national staple.

The top has a thin, shiny, slightly crackly crust that shatters faintly under the teeth, giving way to a dense, fudgy interior that turns almost molten at the center of a slightly underbaked pan. The flavor is straight, dark chocolate, rich and a little bittersweet, with butter rounding it out. Walnuts add a soft crunch and a toasty edge against the smooth crumb. A good brownie is intensely chocolatey and clings to the roof of the mouth; the corner pieces, with two chewy crust edges, are the prizes.

Texture is set by the ratio of fat and sugar to flour: with little flour, almost no gluten develops, so the bars stay tender and dense rather than springing up like cake. Melted chocolate and butter coat the few flour particles, and the high sugar holds moisture, keeping the crumb fudgy. The signature crackly top forms when sugar dissolves into the eggs and rises to the surface, where it sets into a thin meringue-like sheet as the bars bake; whisking the sugar and eggs well encourages it. Baking at moderate heat, around 175°C, and pulling the pan while the center is just set leaves the middle soft, since the bars continue to firm as they cool. More flour and a little leavening swing the same formula toward a lighter, cakier brownie.