My life is filled with memories of cooking and baking. These memories start in my earliest memories of childhood, helping my parents in the kitchen. The first recipe that I ever memorized, and made by myself was Brownies. I was 5 or 6 and, with supervision of my mother, I made “our” brownie recipe. I also baked this recipe with my father. It is this brownie recipe that I chose to put in our Sunday School cookbook in 1976. It is a very straight forward Brownie recipe that my mother got out of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. When I was little I used to thumb through every page vowing that “one day” I would make every recipe in the book. I have not.
My mother still has the Betty Crocker Cooky Book and the “brownie pan” that I used to bake my brownies in. I thumbed through the book yesterday morning when I was having coffee with my mother. It is listed on the page of “The Best Cooky of 1920-1930”. I don’t know if it really was the best “cooky” of the Roaring ‘20’s, but I do know it is one of the best memories of baking that I have.
I think I will go throw on some Bessie Smith and make these with my girls! Have a Roaring good day.
Cocoa Brownies
- ½ cup shortening
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
-
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Bake about 30 minutes.
-
Mix shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla until well blended.
-
Blend dry ingredients; mix in.
-
Stir in nuts.
-
Spread in well-greased 8x8x2 inch pan.
Makes 16 brownies