December 2 - The Presbyterian Brownies

Over the Thanksgiving dinner table I learned about a quiet uprising in a small Presbyterian community in upstate New York.

The gentleman who told me the story was happy to be married to a woman who baked cookies for him every day. I could tell that he felt particularly blessed in life, enjoying something most men only dream of in a wife. He lives his life with the awareness that at any moment, a home made cookie is there for the taking, should he so desire. He clearly felt that he had hit the jackpot when this cookie-baking woman agreed to be his wife.

When my mother was a child, the church still frowned on dancing, card playing and certain practices which I will not go in to here. There were even certain flavors which the church seemed to frown on, although the law had not been codified. The Methodist Church embraced vanilla, lemon and peppermint, unless of course the recipe was "too rich". The only time chocolate made an appearance was at church suppers, when we were served a brick of van-choc-straw flavored ice cream after we had cleaned our plate. Even then the full effect of the chocolate was diluted by the vanilla and strawberry.

I still remember the Friday evening my mother brought a batch of cupcakes, frosted with mocha icing, to a church event. I had, literally, never experienced mocha before—I didn't even know that it was a possibility. The cupcakes themselves were predictably white, but the hint of coffee in the chocolate frosting tasted decadent, forbidden, possibly even roman catholic. I savored that cupcake, eating it slowly as we watched John Wayne in "The Alamo" projected on to a white sheet hung in the church basement. I can tell you exactly what I was wearing (the navy blue sweater with the angora collar) and where I sat (front row on the floor) when I ate that cupcake. Ignoring the stern admonitions of the adults, I snuck up to the refreshment table under cover of movie-night darkness and took a second cupcake. Despite what I had been told would happen if I ever took a second cupcake, I didn't get a terrible stomach ache, although I am aware that I still may have to "answer to God" for what I did.

But enough already about my childhood in Brooklyn. What's going on with the square-dancing, cookie-eating Presbyterians?

I can't sugar-coat this. I learned last Thursday that brownies—nay all forms of chocolate—have been OUTLAWED in at least one upstate Presbyterian Church. A claim has been made that the crumbs are impossible to get out of the wall-to-wall carpet. The gentleman-whose-wife-bakes-cookies told me this story. He still looked shell-shocked, as if he can't quite comprehend what has happened in his church. He told me that his wife, in an attempt to circumvent church law and appease the powers that be, had even gone so far as to actually invent a "drop-brownie". Instead of baking her  brownies in a pan, which produces a crunchy edge, but dark crumbly middle, she painstakingly drops the brownie batter in measured spoonfuls on a cookie sheet, thus eliminating crumbs. But even this offering was rejected.

Contemplating the prospect of never eating chocolate in church again, she was moved to speak. "The drop brownies are SO SMALL you can put the entire thing in your mouth. There are NO CRUMBS if you eat them properly!" she said. But even the lovingly conceived drop brownies fall under the heinous ban on chocolate forced on the people by an unthinking church hierarchy. This was just too much. The cookie-baking wife looked at me conspiratorially and said "I don't know what I'm going to do. I feel like a rebel..."  I looked her in the eye and responded "Well, maybe you'll just have to nail one of those drop brownies to the church door..." Much to my surprise, they got it.