Marriage doesn’t always last, but the memory of a great dessert never fades. Thirty-five years after their divorce, my dad still talks about my mom’s chocolate brownies with an intense passion (which I think bothers my stepmother just a little bit).
In 1969 just before my parents married, my dad was training in the Army Reserves at Fort Drum in Watertown, NY. It was here that he first tasted my mom’s fudgy brownies — and yes, a taste is pretty much all he got. When you’re in the army, there’s nothing like a fresh-baked, edible care package, and so no surprise that his bunkmates pounced on the brownies like a pack of ravenous hyenas.
My mother was an amazing baker. She had a “sense” for food, almost as if some imaginary angel on her shoulder whispered ingredient amounts and on-the-fly substitutions in her ear. She was not, however, very precise with her recipes. I’m a different kind of cook, a bit more Type-A. If my recipe says one teaspoon baking powder and my measuring spoon comes out with a dimple, I will dump it and measure again.
As excited as I was to find my mom’s brownie recipe, it did take a little tweaking to get it right. “Two squares of chocolate” as a measurement is not exactly … exact. But mystery is really an opportunity to learn, so four brownie batches later, I’ve incorporated four times the chocolate.
If these brownies can’t save a marriage, nothing can.
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ruth's fudgy brownies
2/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons butter
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate (1 baking bar)
1 ounce semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
2/3 cup broken walnuts (optional)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, and line a 8 x 8 baking square baking pan with parchment paper.
- Sift dry ingredients into a medium bowl.
- Cut butter and unsweetened chocolate into chunks and melt over a double-boiler. Set aside and cool.
- In a large bowl, beat eggs well, adding sugar gradually. Incorporate chocolate-butter mixture once it has cooled, semisweet chocolate chunks, vanilla and nuts if using. Gently fold in the dry ingredients.
- Spread mixture as evenly as you can into pan with a spatula. It will be very thick. Bake for 25-30 minutes until top is just slightly springy.
START TO FINISH: 1 HOUR. SERVES 12.
Originally published on September 18, 2019
