I Made Katharine Hepburn's 'Home-Wrecking' Brownies and Here's What Happened
Katharine Hepburn's love for chocolate was well documented. So was her 26-year love affair with her frequent costar, Spencer Tracy, who was of course married, until he died in 1967. But while the four-time Best Actress Oscar winner would openly share her favorite brownies (as well as the recipe) with visitors at tea, Hepburn kept quiet about her relationship with Tracy until his wife also passed away in 1983.
Hepburn's famous brownie recipe originally made the rounds after her death in 2003, when an old neighbor wrote in to The New York Times. Since then, it's become a viral sensation many times over thanks to one reviewer who blamed the brownies for breaking up her marriage-with a dash of humor, of course.
"This has been my go-to brownie recipe for 30 years, even after going to baking school!" Sydne Newberry wrote two years ago. "I agree that using the best cocoa possible makes a difference. These days, I use Callebaut. In the '80s, an acquaintance in Germany to whom I brought some of the brownies, and who considered herself a great cook, asked for the recipe but was never able to get it to work. She kept asking me what she was doing wrong and I was never able to solve her problem. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and stole my husband!"
To this day, the review remains the Times team's favorite. And recently, The Cut, which hailed Newberry's words as "the "greatest recipe comment of all time," tracked her down for the full story. Apparently, the other woman, a "gorgeous Italian woman who was very proud of her cooking and was a real food snob" couldn't get Hepburn's recipe right, and, as Newberry told the publication, "she insinuated that I'd purposely left something out of the recipe." A few years later, the woman, newly divorced, came to visit Newberry and began an affair with her husband which resulted in the end of the marriage.
Now happily remarried, Newberry still doesn't know what went wrong with her acquaintance's baking, but, referring to Hepburn's own issues with infidelity, said, "I can't think of it without thinking of that little twist of irony."
So, is there something especially inauspicious about Hepburn's brownie recipe, or is it purely a coincidence? I decided to test it out and see for myself-even if it's more likely that Hepburn's friend and cook for more than 30 years, Norah Moore, was the one whipping up the chocolatey treat.
In Remembering Katharine Hepburn, Ann Nyberg wrote that Moore was always sure to have them on hand for her hungry employer. That's not to say the Old Hollywood icon couldn't cook. Apparently, she was a serious homebody and frequently made her own food, as she saw going out to eat as a waste of money.
Similarly frugal, I've only ever used Hershey's or store-brand cocoa powder before. But on Newberry's recommendation that it makes all the difference, I splurged on professional baker-quality Valrhona ($14, surlatable.com).
It's a safe bet that Hepburn, a chocolate fanatic whose great-niece, Anne of Green Gables actress Schuyler Grant, claimed she could put away a pound of chocolate per week, would be selective about the main ingredient as well. Though, funnily enough, the star saw herself as "a standard brand-like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate," she did call Mondel Chocolates in New York City "the best in the world." (According to The New York Times, you can still order "the Hepburn mix"-chocolate pecan turtles, molasses chips, butter crunch, orange peel, champagne truffles, and dark almond bark-at Mondel's today.)
"What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of eating chocolate," Hepburn once said.
As I melted the stick of butter and 1/2 cup of cocoa powder into a creamy, dark chocolate sauce, I had the fleeting feeling that surely my sweatpants and t-shirt would offend the fashion legend. I needn't have worried: As I learned later in Nyberg's book, Hepburn was much more casual in real life than she was on-screen. Sweats were her standard at-home attire-a girl after my own heart.
When the cocoa-butter had cooled a bit, I mixed in two eggs, one by one, with the KitchenAid my boyfriend gave me last Christmas (if that isn't true love, I don't know what is). Next came a teaspoon of vanilla, followed by the dry ingredients, 1/4 cup flour, 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans-I went with glazed pecans from Savannah's Candy Kitchen-and a pinch of salt, all of which I combined in a separate bowl first.
Note the modest amount of flour. That was key for dear Kate, who hated too much flour in brownies. ''And don't overbake them! They should be moist, not cakey!'' she instructed her neighbor.
So, on those orders, I poured the batter into a greased, 8x8-inch pan, slid it into the oven preheated to 325 degrees, and carefully set the alarm for 30 minutes (the lower end of the range, which maxes out at 35).
After 33 minutes, a toothpick still came out slightly gooey, but not overly so, which told me it was time to take them out, cool, and cut into squares.
For some feedback, I brought the bars to work and fed them to my coworkers. To borrow Hepburn's own highest, one-word movie review: "Raves!" The fudgy bars were ultra rich but not too sweet, meaning they'd pair perfectly with a sundae (TV producer Joan Kramer recalled enjoying them à la mode with Hepburn during their final goodbye) or drizzled with caramel sauce. Don't skip the pecans: I made one pan without and they simply weren't as good-and that's coming from someone who usually prefers sweets sans nuts.
Still, as much as my coworkers enjoyed the mid-afternoon snack, none of them offered to leave their partners for me-nor did they seem to care enough to ever steal my boyfriend over the matter.
As for my boyfriend and me? We both ate them up but agreed we still prefer the boxed mix (sorry, Kate!)-nothing worth jeopardizing our relationship over.
The verdict: Maybe Newberry's brownie trouble was only a symptom of a bigger problem.
To get the full recipe, Newberry's take on Hepburn's brownies, visit NPR.
(h/t The Cut)
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