Katharine Hepburn’s brownies, slightly tweaked

 

These are wonderfully fudgy, borderline gooey. If you prefer crunchy, dry brownies, this is probably not the recipe for you. Or you could bake them longer. I don’t know, because I have no desire to find out! I have tweaked the original recipe slightly to suit myself and my array of baking pans. My way creates eight brownies that are 2 inches square and about an inch thick.

Ingredients

• ½ cup cocoa *
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup flour (I have even used a gluten-free flour substitute, which worked fine)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Pinch of salt -- I prefer using about half a teaspoon because I like salt with chocolate. Up to you.
  
• 1 cup roughly chopped walnuts or pecans (optional – I never use them)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line a loaf size baking pan** with parchment paper,or butter it well.
2. Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over medium low, then remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until blended. Stir in the sugar. Let this mixture cool a bit while you measure the other ingredients and crack the eggs (there’s a risk of scrambling the eggs if you add them while the mixture is too hot). Always crack eggs one at a time into a separate small bowl, just in case, and give them a little whisk before adding.
3. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and, if using, nuts. Mix well.
4.  Pour into baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes till a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean***.
5. Cool completely (about an hour) and cut into squares. These brownies are very fudgy and may be somewhat difficult to slice cleanly; use a sharp knife and a spatula to help them loosen from the baking dish if you have not used parchment, If you have used parchment, it’s a snap to lift them out and cut them on a board.

 

*Some recipes say you can substitute 2 squares of unsweetened bakers chocolate. I personally think that if you do so, you should reduce the butter by a couple of pats’ worth, because there is some fat in the chocolate. I haven’t tried it, because I am more likely to have cocoa powder on hand than unsweetened bakers chocolate.

**I use a pan that’s approximately 4 x 9, and I line it with parchment paper even though it is allegedly non-stick. If you butter your pan instead, the brownies likely will cook a bit faster, and if you use a lot of butter, they might be even gooier. The original recipe says to use an 8 x 8 inch pan,baked at 325 for 40 minutes, but I thought the brownies were a bit thin. If you double the recipe, a 9x9 pan would probably work just fine; you would probably have to adjust the time, using the toothpick to determine when they are ready.

***”Clean” is relative – no gooey crumbs, but the toothpick might be stained a bit by the chocolate. That’s fine for me because, again, I like fudgy brownies rather than dry, cakelike ones.