This American classic is one of the easiest sweet treats to make. The recipe could be written in one sentence: melt butter and chocolate, whisk eggs and sugar, combine, fold in flour and bake. The most delicious brownies I’ve ever had were made by Scottish food writer Sue Lawrence; they contained fresh raspberries and inspired my chocolate & raspberry brownies recipe. Frozen raspberries won’t work, they’re too moist, so if fresh aren’t available just leave them out, or add some nuts instead – hazelnuts, walnuts and macadamias all work well. Chocolate is notoriously hard to match with wine; sometimes a sweet fortified works but, as these brownies aren’t very sweet, I prefer an Islay single malt whisky, such as Ardbeg. See video below for another deliciously easy fruity sweet treat from the USA.
Makes 15 pieces
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It seems there’s two parts to this story. In 1893, Bertha Palmer asked chefs at her husband’s hotel in Chicago to create an easy-to-eat dessert for the boxed lunches served in the Women’s Pavilion at the World Columbian Exposition. They came up with the brownie, though it seems they didn’t give it that name. Fanny Farmer is widely credited with publishing the first brownie recipe in The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook in the early 1900s, though there may have been an earlier one published, in 1899, in a community cookbook from Machias in Maine.