The original brownies were blondies

Fannie Farmer and the birth of the brownie

The first known recipe for brownies was published in 1896, by Fannie Farmer, a pioneer of modern American cookery. But her recipe didn’t include chocolate. The original brownie, as described by Felicity Cloake, was a ‘dense, fudgy, butterscotch-flavoured bar’ - what we recognise today as a blondie. These brownies, which got their colour and flavour from molasses, were baked individually in ‘small, shallow, fancy cake tins’ rather than as a traybake.

Fannie only added chocolate to her recipe a decade later, in 1906, coinciding with the rapid expansion of chocolate manufacturing in America.

Choc on top

Chocolate brownies quickly became the norm and came to be known simply as 'brownies'.

Around the mid-1900s the original molasses brownies became known as blonde brownies, which in turn became 'blondies'.

What’s in a name?

This means the original brownies were blondies but blondies get their name from brownies. And where do brownies get their name from? Not their colour.

Brownies take their name from the mischievous little creatures - called ‘brownies’’ - that featured in the cartoons and poems of the Candian author Palmer Cox.

So you could say that brownies come from a Fannie and a Cox.