No-butter version of Katharine Hepburn's brownies a healthier stand-in
Author Laurie Colwin and I go way back. Colwin and her solid storytelling and warmly clear writing appeared on my radar in Gourmet magazine nearly 30 years ago. Colwin was no snooty, truffles-and-foie-gras Gourmet writer. No. Colwin made me want to be in her kitchen and cook with her and savor the results.
You see, Laurie Colwin was a great home cook and loved to write about her life and how food wove through her life's fabric. Her two books: “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking” share her stories with recipes knitted into each one. Colwin's “More Home Cooking” is where I discovered Katharine Hepburn's recipe for brownies.
Colwin writes: “The best recipe I have for brownies comes from a magazine article about Katharine Hepburn.” Colwin goes on: “If there were no other reason to admire Katharine Hepburn, this pan of brownies would be enough to make you worship her.”
Decades ago, Colwin's unabashed praise led me to read through Hepburn's recipe until I came to a screeching halt. As written in Colwin's book: Hepburn's recipe called for 1/4-cup all-purpose flour. You read that correctly, a single quarter cup.
At first, I believed Colwin had made a typographical error. One quarter-cup of flour for an 8-by-8-inch pan of brownies could not be the correct amount; it's simply too little. At that time, I didn't make Hepburn's brownies because I thought I'd end up throwing them away.
Fast forward to April 2019 and Leite's Culinaria, a culinary website, where they shared Colwin's story and Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe, and there it was again — ¼ cup flour. I thought, that must be correct and proceeded to make her brownies as written.
Colwin didn't want walnuts her in her brownies, but Hepburn did and wanting to make them as authentic as possible I went with the nuts.
Lining the pan with foil and buttering the foil was the biggest hassle. The brownie batter starts in a saucepan with melting chocolate and butter. Once melted, you add all the remaining ingredients to the same pan. Easy.
When the brownies came out of my oven, they had the shiny, crispy top of a classic brownie. The enticing aroma of chocolate and walnuts filled my kitchen. Colwin and Hepburn know their stuff — the brownies were tender, moist with a big chocolate flavor. Sensational.
Next, I wondered if there was a way to cut the calories and fat in Hepburn's brownies without diminishing the pluses.
I turned to drained, unsweetened applesauce and ditched the butter. That substitution cut more than 700 calories and 92 fat grams out of the brownies. Otherwise, the recipe came together in the same way. The baking time was shorter because the water from the applesauce evaporates, where the butter doesn't.
How were my new version of Hepburn's brownies? Nearly a perfect match. The flavor wasn't quite as rich; otherwise indistinguishable. And for that minor difference, I'd cut over 45 calories per brownie and trimmed not quite half the fat.
I want to think Hepburn would appreciate what I'd done with her brownies. Let me know what you think.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.