The Crumpet Tea Room & Brownies

One of the first tea rooms I ever visited was the Crumpet Tea Room in Rogers, Arkansas. It was the late eighties or early nineties. Still single at the time, I'd gotten in the habit of joining a girlfriend for trips to her home in northwest Arkansas, and her mother introduced me to the tea room. It's the first time I can remember eating ladies-who-lunch food off a frilly floral tablecloth on a table laden with beautifully mismatched china and napkins. The tea room was known for its Hot Orange Rolls, and I bought the cookbook containing the recipe (which I have yet to make!) as a souvenir of the visit.


Over the weekend, I was looking for a brownie recipe to make using the new Special Dark variety of Hershey's Cocoa. I love dark chocolate, and I was intrigued at the note on the side panel: "The natural antioxidants found in tea and certain fruits can also be found in Hershey's Cocoa." And isn't that a tea leaf I see depicted on the cocoa container?


At any rate, this cocoa makes terrific chocolate chip cookies, so I decided to see how it did in brownies. I tweaked a recipe I found in the Crumpet Tea Room Cookbook, and here's the result: a fudge type brownie that is wonderful with a cup of Upton's Melange de Chamonix tea!

Dark Chocolate and Walnut Brownies

1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup oil
3 heaping tablespoons Hershey's Cocoa (Special Dark)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray an 8 x 8 inch pan with cooking spray.

Mix sugar and oil well. Add other ingredients and mix just until blended. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.