Dave and Kate’s Chocolate Brownies

One thing you may not know about me – after blogging for twenty years, you thought you knew everything about me, didn’t you? – was that the Hepburns were my neighbors growing up. They were extremely nice people, always smiling and very pleasant. While Katherine wasn’t in the ‘hood, it was her brother and his wife who lived just down the street.

If you grew up in suburbia in the 60s, this may seem unusual to you (unless you live in L.A.) they were “walkers.” While we drove past them in my mom’s station wagon, we’de give them a wave, they’d wave back, and we’d keep driving, thinking they were a little loopy. Then my mom stepped on the gas, and we drove away.

We didn’t see the most famous member of their family, as she lived down by the seashore. Perhaps it was a mixed blessing that she didn’t live close because she was reputed to be a handful at the neighborhood meetings, and was said to be quite sharp with a retort. But, as we used to say in New England, “High fences make for good neighbors,” and we all kept to ourselves. One thing I didn’t know at the time was that she had an excellent brownie recipe, which I never got to sample from her oven. Later in life, I met an elderly couple in Miami, who knew her for many years, and they told me “Kate” sent them a box every year at Christmas. Those lucky ladies!

When I explored the world of chocolate in The Great Book of Chocolate, I was looking for some recipes that used unsweetened chocolate (sometimes called bitter chocolate), known as 100% pure pâte de cacao in France, as it’s made only of ground cocoa beans and has no sugar. And I decided to include Ms. Hepburn’s justly famous brownie recipe since it fit that bill.

Years later, when I went to chocolate school in Belgium, I asked the chef instructor why unsweetened chocolate, which we frequently use in recipes in America (especially brownies), wasn’t used in Europe since it was so common in the States. (And in spite of the fact that we’re known to have a collective sweet tooth, unsweetened chocolate was the default chocolate in recipes for a long, long time.) Even later in life, I was searching for unsweetened chocolate in Paris. Some chocolate shops sell bars of 100% chocolate tablets, but they’re rather pricey for baking and since I use so much chocolate, I wanted more than a four-ounce rectangle of it.

I found my block of cent percent pâte de cacao at G. Detou, which weighed in at eight pounds, and these super-chocolate brownies have been in my rotation ever since. One thing I forgot is that while many brownie recipes call for eight or ten ounces of bittersweet chocolate, because unsweetened chocolate is so strong, in brownies like these, you only use two ounces. It’s been a number of years, but I still am working my way through that block of chocolate. (Chocolate is high in antioxidants, so a bar made of pure 100% cocoa beans will keep for quite a while.)

I dubbed them Dave and Kate’s Brownies since in reality, and a little in my imagination, we share a few things in common, including a love of great brownies. I toggled Katherine Hepburn’s recipe a bit but didn’t want to incur the wrath of Ms. Hepburn, wherever she is. So for those who want to omit the nuts, reduce the sugar, use another chocolate, or mess around with it in any way, well…consider yourself warned.

Related Links

Gluten-Free Brownies

Altoid Brownies

G. Detou (Unsweetened chocolate in Paris)

Chocolate FAQs