LoDette's Brownies

Vera Lee

There comes a time in every girls life when she contemplates changing her name. Lurlene has called me VeraLee for quite some time and it certainly is a fine enough name. The name Lurlene.....well when you hear it you know....this is a woman to be reckoned with. The name VeraLee.....it just sounds like the name of someone who could be your doormat. Sometimes you just get tired of trying to be that nice, sweet girl next door and you just want to kick some big-ass butt. That is the time when you need an alter alter ego. Just like the two sides of a coin......there are two sides to every person. One side may deal with the dingbats at work and one may come to the aid of a friend. VerDell and VeraLee are the two sides of this old coin.

I came to the realization of my inner VerDell last weekend at the Cape. I was there with Bubba and the daughter LoDette to attend the Epiphany Party. The people in the Cape....well they are serious about helping each other out of hard times. Each year, Saint Christopher of the Cape organizes a community party at the firehouse. He cooks up a big pot of chili and invites everyone to come and share a bowl. People are asked to bring an appetizer, a desert, or a bottle of wine.....and their least favorite Christmas gift. The gifts (from really nice gift certificates to pink flamingoes to games of "Pin the Junk on the Hunk") are auctioned off with all the money going to a worthy cause.

Well....little LoDette....she loves her some chocolate and she was just bound and determined that we were going to make some brownies to take to the party. Of course, the cupboard was mostly bare and I was just tired and didn't feel like trekking to the store so I pulled out the cookbooks looking for a brownie recipe that could be made with what we had on hand. As I was flipping through the pages I ran across a recipe called "Verdell's Brownies". Well, Verdell just sounded like someone you did not mess around with....I liked her immediately. Another plus, the recipe called for 3 sticks of butter and cocoa. These happened to be ingredients we had on hand.
Now I have been trying to pass on my cooking knowledge to little LoDette for quite some time. So far she has learned that whenever a woman goes into the kitchen to cook the very first thing she must do is open up a bottle of Champaign....and so we began our recipe. Lodette put two sticks of butter in the pan with the cocoa and it wasn't long before she decided that the cocoa was scorching and perhaps we should melt the butter first. Being the problem solver that she is.....Lodette used the microwave to overcome this slight difficulty. Then came the issue of what pan to use.....the recipe said to use a "sheet pan" but Little LoDette thought that brownies always were cooked in a square pan so square pan it was. After cooking for 20 minutes as suggested in the recipe, the brownies were still liquid....this resulted in an additional 20 minutes of cooking time and the opening of another bottle of Champaign.

When the brownies had cooled a bit, it was time to make Verdell's icing. Her recipe called for 4X sugar but LL (Little LoDette) had never heard of such a thing. I started pulling things out of the cupboard looking for powdered sugar when Lodette said, "Well it won't matter if you can't find it, we will just use four times the amount of regular sugar." I was trying to explain to her the fine distinctions between multiplication and varieties of cane, powdered, 4X, 10X, and confectioner's sugar when Little LoDette downed that rest of the second bottle of Champaign.

Soon, it came to my attention that LL has been doing some unsupervised TV watching. When those brownies had been iced she proceeded to get out three plates and cut samples from the corners, edges, and middle of the pan. She ran to get Bubba so that he could "judge" her brownies. Needless to say she was in chocolate heaven......so much so that she missed her afternoon nap.

Finally LL arranged her brownies on a plate (leaving a few in the pan......just in case of a chocolate emergency) and proudly took them to the Epiphany Party. Well.....they must have been good because they were all gone in a second and I didn't even see them fly by. Somehow I was conned into helping serve the chili (see where the name VeraLee will get you) while LoDette and Bubba conversed with the neighbors. By the time I made it to the table to sit down, LoDette had polished off yet another bottle of Champaign, greeted a student, held an impromptu parent conference, and was on stage showcasing auction items in the vein of Vanna White.

This recipe is from the Cape Charles High School Centennial Cookbook (1885-1995) which was a reprint of the 1984 Cookbook complied by the Cape Charles High School Parent-Teachers Association. Verdell Russell was a biology teacher at the school.

VERDELL'S BROWNIES
(LoDette's suggestions are also included in italics)
1 Cup margarine (butter)
4 Tablespoons of cocoa
3 eggs
2 Cups of sugar
1 1/2 Cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla

(Open a bottle of Champaign and start drinking while you read the recipe.) Melt margarine and cocoa together. (Melt the butter in the microwave and then add the cocoa.) Add remaining ingredients. Bake in a waxed paper lined (what the heck, just spray the pan with Pam) sheet pan (what is a sheet pan? Brownies are always baked in a square pan) at 350 degrees for about 20 to 30 minutes. (It will probably take at least 40 minutes so you better have another bottle of Champaign chilling in the frig. Come into the kitchen every 10 minutes to check on the brownies and to refill your glass.) Do not over bake. (My Grandma taught me that!)

ICING
2 Cups 4X sugar (This is now called powdered sugar and comes in a box.)
1/3 Cup margarine (butter)
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
Milk (to thin)
Lemon juice (I don't think so.....)
1/2 Cup chopped nuts (Not today....)

Melt margarine and cocoa together. (Melt the butter in the microwave and then add the cocoa. It looks and smells really good but don't taste it. Trust me. Wait until you add the sugar.) Add 4X sugar. (This is now called powdered sugar and comes in a box. It looks lumpy so I used a sifter which is like a big cup with a screen at the bottom. You put the sugar in the top and then turn the handle thing and the sugar comes out the bottom and into the bowl.) Thin with milk and add a squirt of lemon juice. Nuts may be added. (Black walnuts are best.) (The recipe should stop with "Thin with milk" which means just add a little at a time until you just want to lick the spoon. We didn't have lemon and who puts lemon in a brownie anyway?)