Success! The perfect brownies every time. Having tried a number of lackluster internet recipes and my fair share of mediocre box-mixes, it was such a relief to finally strike gold with the tried and true Fat Witch Brownie. The texture is great, the richness is just right; I even reduced the sugar by half and they were still terrific. These tasty morsels are perfect with a hot cup of tea or coffee (dare I suggest a hot chocolate and whipped cream?), next to a window on a cloudy day (preferably raining), with a purring cat at your side (if there happens to be one in the vicinity).
“You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure—and when I say nothing, I mean nothing—you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That’s such a comfort."
—Julie Powell, Julia and Julia
There is a lot to be said for the specificity of Fat Witch Brownies—most baking books would only have a section on brownies (if that)—but the forward to the book was a big reason why I borrowed it. I liked the story a lot and only realized later that I have really begun to 'collect' stories like these: the way that Jenna Hunterson in Waitress (fiction) expresses and negotiates her fears and frustrations with unique and vividly-imagined pie compositions (with names such as I don't want Earl's baby pie)... Julie Powell in Julie and Julia (non-fiction) who knows that there is nothing like the comfort of preparing a simple chocolate custard to alleviate the stress of her job at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
Here is part of what Helding had to say:
"...when I was a trader on Wall Street... I found baking relaxing. The familiar whiz of my electric mixer, the heat radiating from my tiny apartment oven, and the aroma of melting chocolate soothed my rattled nerves. As I cracked eggs and sifted flour, the pressures of the stock exchange faded far from my mind..."
"Soon I realized my heart wasn't on Wall Street; it was in my trusty 9-inch x 9-inch baking pan, my floury apron, and my chocolate-stained oven mitts."
I love the movie Stranger than Fiction, and the law-student-turned-dogooder-baker, Ana Pascal, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Helding's Fat Witch Brownie story reminded me of her as well. (See? I've definitely been collecting these sorts of stories).
Like Fred and George Weasley (fictional, but also the best ever), Zooey Deschanel, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Oprah, and Steve Jobs (I could go on), neither Pascal nor Harding took the conventional route. Pascal dropped out of Harvard and Helding left a promising career on Wall Street, both to open bakeries. In Helding's case, it was a bakery that dealt in only one thing: brownies (in her own words: "not the soundest of business models, I know"), but she was open to the experience and she was willing to take the plunge and to see what happened. That's what mattered.
I know I have a lot to learn from people like Helding, and Ana Pascal, and Fred and George Weasley. They're brave and have big visions. Most consequentially, they bring those visions to life, weathering the unknown and letting the (chocolate) chips fall where they may.
Here's that scene from Stranger than Fiction:
Harold: So when did you decide to become a baker?
Ana: In college...
Harold: Oh, like in a cooking college?
Ana: I went to Harvard Law actually.
Harold: Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed it was...
Ana: No, no, that’s fine. I didn’t finish.
Harold: Something happened?
Ana: No, I was barely accepted. I mean, really, barely! The only reason they let me come was because of my essay – ‘How I was going to make the world a better place with my degree’. And, anyway, we would have to participate in these study sessions... my classmates and I... sometimes all night long... and so I baked... so that no one would go hungry while we worked. Sometimes I would bake all afternoon in the kitchen in the dorm and I would bring my little treats to the study groups.. and people loved them. I made oat milk cookies, peanut-butter bars, dark chocolate, macadamia nut wedges, and everyone would eat and stay happy and study harder and be better on the tests.. and then more and more people started coming to the study groups... and I’d bring more snacks.. and I was always looking for better and better recipes... until soon it was... apricot croissants... and mocha bars with an almond glaze, and lemon chiffon cake with a zesty peach icing... and at the end of the semester I had 27 study partners, 8 mead journals filled with recipes, and a ‘D’ average. So I dropped out. I just figured that if I was going to make the world a better place, I would do it with cookies.
Transcription source: Nikhil Kiran Kardale
"I decided if I was going to make the world a better place I would do it with cookies."
Fat Witch Brownies (the book) is full of tantalizing morsels like Butterscotch Bars, Lemon Bars, and Hazelnut Cream Cheese Brownies, but I ended up simply making the signature brownies twice (they were so good) before returning the book. Also in there for the curious dabbler are recipes like classic lemon squares, White Chocolate Almost Bars, and Lavender Treats. To get you started, here is the list of ingredients for a classic Fat Witch Brownie:
14 Tablespoons butter (that's equivalent to just less than a cup, 0.875 of a cup to be exact)
½ cup plus 2 Tablespoons bittersweet chocolate chips
1¼ cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup plus 2 Tablespoons flour
Pinch of salt
After melting the chocolate over low heat with the wet ingredients, stir the dry ingredients together, and blend dry with wet until smooth. Bake in a pre-heated 350° oven for 33 minutes—in a 9x9 pan, if you've got one.
Borrow the book here!
Inspired? Try these recipe books, too:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child
There are only five cake recipes in Beck, Bertholle, and Child's impressive 524-recipe tome, but of course, that's what I went looking for first! Both the rein de saba (chocolate almond cake) and the gâteau à l'orange (orange spongecake) were delicious. I suggest using a good homemade lemon pie filling between the layers of the gateau l'orange—I did it for a friend's wedding cake and it was the perfect pairing!
A nice mix of savory and sweet in this one: great for treating yourself at home and making the holidays special, whatever may come.
I got to meet Anna Olsen at a convention in the city several years ago and she is just as warm and bubbly in person as she is on television. Keep an eye out for her newest book, Baking Day with Anna Olson, which will be available at the library soon!
The Starving Artist Cookbook by Sara Zin
There is a lot to recommend this book, but I'd like to hone in on the visuals. Good photographs can make for an engaging recipe book (at least I enjoy seeing what I'm about to make before embarking) and what I really liked about The Starving Artist was that the dishes are illustrated rather than photographed! The effect is lovely. And whoever it was who decided on artichoke patterned endpapers—very nicely done.
I made "Basia's Chocolate Walnut Cake" on page 216. It was an ambitious choice for me, what with the soaking of cherries in vodka, buzzing through batches of walnuts in the coffee grinder, layering fresh raspberries between halved slabs of cake, and making the chocolatey, meringue-based frosting with freshly separated eggs (number of bowls involved: about 1 billion)—but it was worth it! I did accidentally add corn starch instead of icing sugar when I was making the icing (sort of like when Anne of Green Gables puts salt instead of sugar into one of her cakes), but luckily I tasted it before dolloping it on! After dumping the ruined batch, I was able to whip up another frosting (with icing sugar this time) and, on the whole, it was really delicious.
In parting, I thought I'd share this excerpt from Psychology Today:
"Molly has several passionate interests, one of which is baking. When someone asked her, when she was 9 or 10 years old, what she wanted to be when she grew up, she replied: “A baker, but I already am one." One thing I’ve learned is that people on the Self-Directed Education path don’t divide life into a period of preparing for the future followed by a period of living that future. They don’t distinguish between learning and living or learning and doing. That’s true when they are children and it’s still true when they are adults."
--Peter Gray, Psychology Today
꧁꧂
Bake on, brave bakers, bake on!
--Victoria Murgante
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