1870 to 1899 Cake #8

Bangor Brownies

BROWNIES!! This treat comes only second to chocolate chip cookies for me. I love the density and richness of a brownie, and the chocolate of course! There are a few origination stories for the brownie, but somehow Bangor Maine seems to have the most connections to it. One story says that a forgetful Bangor housewife forgot to add the baking powder to her chocolate cake and the brownie was born. And yet there is another story that says that a woman named Maria Howard who worked at the Walter Lowney Chocolate Company in 1907 added an egg and more chocolate to Fannie Farmer's recipe and called it the Bangor Brownie in honor of her bosses hometown in Bangor, Maine. Fannie Farmer published a brownie recipe in her 1896 book, but the recipe only contained molasses and no chocolate. She named it a Brownie due to the brown color that molasses gave the cake.

The recipe in this book came from The Service Club of Chicago. This was a philanthropic organization, founded in 1890, to help improve the lives of Chicago's immigrants and their children. They sold a cookbook full of recipes from their members for $1 each to raise money and this brownie recipe was one of the recipes included in that book.

My Experience:

Brownies are my jam and I have made hundreds of pans over the years. This recipe was very short and simple and only made a small amount. The brownies were fine but I have been spoiled with richness and decadence. In that time they used less chocolate and it was bit bland on my taste-buds. My husband, who thinks my brownies are too rich, thought that these brownies were nice and of course between us no brownies were wasted:)