ACCIDENTALLY DELICIOUS

One day – I was in my twenties – my kid sister Ilona was all excited. She had Katharine Hepburn’s recipe for brownies. Like wow, man! Cool. Hepburn. We LOVED her and chocolate.

It got better. This recipe was SO EASY and REALLY GOOD. Cleanup was super easy, too – only one pot to wash and no bowls.

To make the brownies, all you had to do was melt some chocolate squares and butter in a pot, add some sugar, vanilla, and then a couple eggs – and get this – only a quarter cup of flour.

Talk about dense and chocolaty! Then mix in the nuts, and that was it. Talk about easy!

And this recipe has certainly passed the test of time.

Your first clue about how long it’s been around is that it calls for melting the chocolate on the stove, not in a microwave.

Anyway, I was all excited about having Hepburn’s very own personal brownies recipe. So I was bragging about this to my girlfriend Debbie. She had a real sweet tooth. In fact, she later opened a bakery. So Debbie took one look at this recipe and said, “That’s my mother’s brownies recipe.” Well, poo. I never did find out if it came from the Ladies’ Home Journal or someplace like that.

Anyway, shortly thereafter I misplaced the recipe. But it was so easy; I just made it from memory. But I had a little trouble getting the oven temperature right and my brownies always seemed a little dry. So after, oh, twenty years or so, I finally got around to asking my sister for another copy of the recipe.

Son of a gun! I found out that I had been using too much chocolate – if you can imagine such a thing! I inadvertently was doubling the amount called for, 4 ounces instead of 2. Well, shoot, I thought I’d make the brownies the “right” way and follow the recipe properly.

And you know what? It’s better with double the chocolate.

What a surprise! And you know what else? It’s even better with double the nuts, too, and how appropriate is THAT for this town?

Recipe: Andrea’s Double Chocolate, Double Nut, Ultra-Fudgy Super Easy Brownies

Preheat oven to 325 F/160 C. Generously butter a square baking pan. Dust it with cocoa (instead of flour). Melt in microwave or a in a heavy saucepan on the stove on very low heat 4 ounces of UNSWEETENED chocolate (such as Baker’s brand chocolate) and one stick (1/4 pound or 225 grams) butter. Remove from stove and stir in 1 cup sugar.

Make sure the mixture is not too hot – otherwise your eggs might cook like scrambled eggs. Add 2 eggs, one at a time, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Quickly stir in ¼ cup flour and ¼ teaspoon salt. (If you use salted butter, omit the salt. Remember, chocolate desserts love salt and taste awful and flat without it.)
Add 2 cups of nuts, such as walnuts or pecans.

Spread batter into pan and bake 25 to 30 minu tes for dense, fudgy brownies.

For a drier, more cake-like brownies bake 40 to 45 minutes. When finished, remove from oven and cool on a rack 10 to 15 minutes.

Then invert pan onto a rack to release the brownies.

Leave inverted on the rack with the pan covering the brownies until they cool to room temperature. These brownies keep very well in the freezer and, in fact, are delicious frozen.

In honor of Katharine Hepburn, here are some quotes which are attributed to her, if you believe everything you read on the internet (I don’t). Nevertheless, they’re fun and I can imagine her saying these things:

Acting is a nice, childish profession - pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it - I would have made a terrible mother.

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

Enemies are so stimulating.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

If you want to give up the admiration of thousands of men for the disdain of one, go ahead, get married.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. But beautiful women don’t need to know about men. It’s the men who have to know about beautiful women.

As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.

Never complain. Never explain.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.