brownie recipe

There is nothing that can beat the smell of homemade brownies baking in the oven. Once the aroma drifts across the house, children and adults alike swarm towards the source of the smell to find out what is baking, and most importantly, when they will be ready. These cake-like wonders are great to smell and even better to devour!

History of brownies

The first known published recipes for brownies appeared in cookbooks in 1904, 1905 and 1906. It wasn’t until the 1920′s, however, that these recipes really came into their own to become the number one baked chocolate desert. Today, brownies still maintain that number one position.

Preparation

The main ingredient in brownies is chocolate. Without the chocolate, there is no brownie! The main debate circling the preparation of brownies is the type of chocolate to use. Fine connoisseurs insist on using the best-of-the-best luxury chocolate while common recipes call for regular chocolate that can be purchased in the grocery store.

There are two different textures to choose from when baking up a batch of mouth-watering brownies. You can make them dry and cake-like or moist and cookie-like. Of course, within these two variations there is a gradient scale between dry and moist.

A lot of the texture will be determined by the eggs added. The more the eggs are beaten the more crusty the brownies will be.

Many cooks add chopped nuts to the brownie mix for extra flavor. The most common nut added is the walnut, but there are many other variations that call for different types of chopped nuts.