Brownies
3 tablespoons Cottolene. 1 egg well beaten. 1/3 cup powdered sugar. 1/3 cup bread flour. 1/3 cup N. O. molasses. 3/4 cup pecan nut meats broken in small bits. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 1/2 teaspoon ginger.
PROCESS: Cream Cottolene and sugar gradually, add molasses, beaten egg, flour sifted with salt, ginger and nut meats. Bake in very small well-greased, iron gem or brownie cups. Place one-half pecan nut meat on top of each cake.
An early molasses brownie, from the years before the name attached itself to chocolate. It is a stiff, gingerbread-like batter baked in small individual moulds, and a few of its ingredients no longer mean what they say.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which sponsored this book. Substitute an equal amount of any solid vegetable shortening, or softened butter, which will give better flavour.
- N. O. molassesNew Orleans molasses: a mild, unsulphured cane syrup, roughly what is sold today as light or full-flavour unsulphured molasses. Do not use blackstrap, which is far more bitter and will overwhelm the small amount of sugar here.
- Powdered sugarIn 1913 this usually meant finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar in a modern box. Use ordinary granulated, or superfine if you have it.
- Bread flourPeriod bread flour was probably closer to today's all-purpose in protein than to modern bread flour. All-purpose is likely the better match; modern bread flour may make these tougher than intended.
- The pansAn iron gem pan is a heavy muffin pan with small, deep cups; a brownie pan is the cast-iron sheet of shallow oblong wells still made today. A standard mini-muffin tin works. Grease thoroughly — there is very little fat in the batter and molasses sticks.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given because the book assumes you know your range. Bake at 350F for about 12 to 15 minutes in mini-muffin cups; they are done when the tops spring back. Molasses browns fast, so start checking early.
- No leaveningThere is no soda or baking powder in the recipe as printed. Expect a dense, chewy, close-grained little cake rather than anything cakey, and a batter stiff enough to be spooned rather than poured.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 small cakes, depending on the size of the cups. Press the half pecan on firmly before baking or it will slide off the domed top.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and issued by the N. K. Fairbank Company to promote Cottolene, its cottonseed-oil shortening — which is why the fat is named as a brand in nearly every recipe in the book. The brownie here has no chocolate in it at all, and that is not an omission: the earliest printed brownies, including the one in Fannie Farmer's 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, were small molasses-and-nut cakes baked in individual moulds, and chocolate versions only crowded them out over the following two decades. The name is generally traced either to the deep brown colour or to the popular Brownie sprites of Palmer Cox's illustrated books, though neither explanation is documented. Then there is the pan: cast-iron founders sold sheets of small oblong wells labelled brownie pans, though how far the shape of the cake owed to the mould rather than the square tin is disputed.