Tea with Katharine Hepburn
I grew up in midtown Manhattan, on West 46th Street. There weren't many food markets in our area so we usually shopped on 9th Avenue or 2nd and 3rd. While my father was shopping over on the East Side one day, he met Katharine Hepburn in the supermarket. It was right around the corner from her townhouse on 49th Street. He saw her in the store several more times over the years.
My father first got in touch with Hepburn when I was planning to quit Bryn Mawr in the middle of my senior year, and none of his protests were affecting me. He begged Hepburn to call me and make me see reason. He figured that if I wouldn’t listen to him, I might listen to her. (My mother had died a few years previously and left him as a single parent.) He wrote all this in a letter that he left at her door.
She phoned me at 7 a.m. one day at my apartment in Ardmore. My father had warned me she might call, but I didn’t believe him, so it was a shock to hear her unique voice coming over the line. ‘Is this the girl who wants to quit Bryn Mawr?’ I said yes. She snapped, ‘Damn silly thing to do!’ and then badgered me until I agreed to stick it out. Part of her sales pitch was inviting me and my father over to her house for tea. Yes, of course I’d finish Bryn Mawr if it meant visiting Hepburn at home!
I believe it was over that spring break that we made the pilgrimage across town from our apartment to her townhouse. I was nervous meeting such a famous woman, who had been an idol of mine since childhood and had worked with some of my favorite actors. But she was kind and gracious and made us feel at home. Along with the tea, she served her classic brownies.
My father visited her a few more times—she had taken a shine to him—and once brought her his own brownies, which she deemed ‘Too cakey!’ She rattled off her own recipe, which was nearly the same but used less flour. I vaguely remember my father’s saying they had discussed the substitution of butter and cocoa for chocolate squares (our family method). So probably the recipe we ended up with was a collaboration between her and my father.
KATHARINE HEPBURN'S BROWNIES (via David Blood Henderson)
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup unsweetened cocoa (preferably Droste or Ghirardelli)
4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 cups broken walnuts or pecans
2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
butter to grease the pan
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
2. Butter the bottom and sides of a 7 x 11-inch baking dish.
3. Melt the butter and cocoa together in a double boiler over simmering water. Stir until smooth. Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes.
4. Mix in the eggs, one at a time. Add the sugar, flour, nuts, vanilla, and salt. Stir until well blended.
5. Pour into greased pan.
6. Bake for 45 minutes. Don’t overbake or the brownies will be dry; they should be very moist.
7. Let the brownies cool completely on a cooling rack before cutting into bars of desired size.
The Bryn Mawr College Cookbook is a collection of recipes, essays, and pictures by Bryn Mawr College alumnae, edited by Brett Jocelyn Epstein '01. This book contains nearly 90 recipes for appetizers, salads, soups, side dishes, spices, main courses, desserts, and drinks, ranging from Korean dumplings, blintzes, chicken and yam chowder, fudge cake, and cassoulet to bolognese sauce, cranberry jelly, curry, bourbon balls, and Mayan hot chocolate.
There are also 13 essays on food-related topics such as dining at Bryn Mawr, using food in language instruction, the joys and bonds of teatime, and discovering the perfect berries. Over 60 illustrations and photographs are included as well, most of them of the college. The alumnae featured in this cookbook come from the class of '28 through the class of '06, with stops in almost every decade in between. All proceeds from sales of the cookbook will be given to Bryn Mawr College.
The cookbook is available here.