Chocolate
Chocolate was first cultivated by the Mayans and the Aztecs. Not everyone has seen the great pyramids that they built but most people have had chocolate. Chocolate is made from the beans of the cocoa plant and has been used as a beverage before multiplying into the countless desserts we enjoy. The first published recipe for chocolate brownies is in the Sears & Roebuck catalog of 1897.
Butter
Butter is made by churning cream or milk. The churning allows the fat to come together, separating it from the rest of the cream. In America we prefer sweet cream butter, which is butter made from pasteurized milk. The butter may be salted or unsalted. Salted butter is generally wrapped in wax paper while unsalted butter is wrapped in foil. The foil preserves the unsalted butter from undesirable substances while the salt in salted butter keeps the butter from becoming rancid quickly, which is why wax paper is used.
Eggs
Chicken eggs are used for our brownies. We mix the eggs with sugar and vanilla before adding any dry ingredients. That's the way Auntie Pearl made them, and her mother, and her mother, and so on. Fresh eggs are used. How many eggs do we use per batch of brownies? Shhh, it's a secret.
Sugar
We love granulated sugar. It mixes well and bakes well. Sometimes we put some in our coffee sometime we don't (when we have a brownie with coffee, we don't use sugar). Do we use brown sugar in our brownies? We'll never tell.
Vanilla
Vanilla come from the bean pod of an orchid. The vine flowers and produces a long bean, which is ripened on the vine and then picked. The pod has heaps of aromatic, dusty-looking seeds inside. The best vanilla comes from Madagascar. It's also the most expensive. Many people regard vanilla as a plain flavor but our brownies wouldn't taste the same without it.
Flour
White wheat flour is used for our brownies. White flour is flour made without the germ or the bran; only the starchy part is used. White flour has a nice clean taste and blends well with the other ingredients in Auntie Pearl's brownies. |
