TWD: Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

Oh botheration! I am so behind on my blogging, and I do apologize for it. I've actually managed to keep up with making and baking. I just haven't managed to keep up with posting. I got swamped with work and then I left for a bit to go on vacation with my family. I just returned from a lovely trip to Blackberry Farm, and things should hopefully return to normal around here.

Lazy feet in a hammock . . . what a nice way to spend the morning.

I think that I'm a lucky girl, and one reason is because I've had the opportunity to know my grandparents very well. I'm the oldest child of an oldest child, so growing up my grandparents were "young" grandparents. I also had a great-grandmother, BaBa, who is the source of my love of baking. She would come to Houston every year, either for Thanskgiving or Christmas, and I would always help her make the cinnamon rolls, cheese bread, and homemade noodles on my days off of school. When she moved to Houston when I was in middle school, I would go over to her house and we'd pour through issues of Bon Appetit, and make lists of all of the menus we wanted to make. I learned so much from her, and while I am certain that I would like to be in the kitchen without her influence, I credit her with my continued desire to try new things when I'm cooking. When she passed away, my grandmother asked me what I would like, and I asked for her recipe files. She had two metal recipe boxes, one green and one gray, with all of her clipped recipes. When I was going through them right after she passed, I came across a clipping for Katherine Hepburn's brownies. I never made them, but I remembered them because the preface to the recipe included an anecdote similar to Dorie's about Katherine Hepburn and her brownies. I adore Katherine Hepburn. I started watching old movies when I was in about 8th grade or so, and I love all of her movies, but I think that my favorite has to be The Philadelphia Story. So, the combination of memories of my BaBa's recipe files, Katherine Hepburn, and brownies had me very excited to try this recipe.

I made these brownies right before I left for vacation. I had a ton of work to do before I left and some of this work involved a very late night typing my stundents' creative writing anthology. What better fuel for a night of editing and typing then brownies? The brownies are a seriously easy, one bowl/pan recipe. I made them as directed, minus the nuts, baked them, and ate them. No problems here. They're very, very fudgy -- perhaps a little too fudgy for my taste -- but very delicious. Dudley was over when I made them, and he found the Sweet Melissa Brown Sugar Vanilla ice cream in my freezer and used the two to make a delicious brownie sundae. I enjoyed mine plain while typing, and Dudley enjoyed the rest while he took care of Lucy for me. Thanks to Lisa of Surviving Oz for picking this delightful recipe!