Brownies Are Beloved Even From A Mix

America's love affair with brownies is alive and well.

Chewy or fudgy; from scratch, from a mix or from the bakery section of the supermarket - any way you like them, they're out there.

That's no surprise: America's sweet tooth is well documented. What is surprising, though, is that the majority of the brownies eaten every day - 63 percent of them, to give the best industry estimate - come out of the home oven.

That's from Harry Balzer, vice-president at the NPD Group, a consumer market-research firm based in Port Washington, N.Y. But it's not as cozy and old-fashioned as it may sound.

Enter Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and Pillsbury with the boxed brownie mix, which accounts for about 40 percent of that 63 percent. Ironic? As Mona Doyle, president of the Consumer Network, a consumer food-research firm, puts it, "We're seeing a lot of interest in cooking and baking from young women - but they want it quick."

Quick is what they get with mixes. An experienced mix-maker can have the brownies from box to oven in 5 minutes flat. Brownie mixes seem reassuring as well. After all, even if Grandma baked cakes from scratch, she probably made brownies from one of the mixes that first came on the market in the early 1950s.

What exactly are these new, young bakers getting when they purchase a brownie mix? A look at the ingredients listed on the label is actually rather reassuring. Most of the basic mixes are little more than sugar, bleached flour, cocoa processed with alkali (that's a standard Dutch-process cocoa), hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt, artificial flavor, baking soda and some form of starch. Nothing really scary. Then the "baker" adds water, an egg and oil (for which melted butter or margarine can be substituted).

Atlanta cooking teacher Shirley Corriher isn't surprised that the box seems so benign. "Consumers don't want additives," says the biochemist, who is writing a book for William Morrow & Co. tentatively titled "Why Things Happen in Food."

Mark McLellan, food technologist and chairman of the Institute of Food Science at Cornell University, agrees that product developers are trying to keep additives to a minimum.

Additives are a turn-off

For some home bakers, any additive is one too many. Marcy Goldman, a professional baker in Montreal and a contributor to The Washington Post's Food section, belongs to this group. "When I see `dehydrated hydrogenated oil' on the ingredient list, I wonder what I'm giving my family," she says.

Corriher says this is a typical response. "Consumers see additives and get turned off. Hydrogenated oils contain fatty acids, which are known to raise cholesterol levels, but butter is known to have the same effect." The cook in Corriher is quick to add, "Of course, nothing tastes better than butter, so I'd choose butter."

And consumers may be more willing to accept additives in certain kinds of products. "When people think of brownies, they're thinking of something Grandma used to make, and they don't want a lot of additives," comments Mark Schardt, associate nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "They seem to be willing to accept more additives in low-fat or fat-free brownies, where they are trading additives for something."

Consumers also seem willing to accept additives in return for mixes that incorporate syrups and chips. Those special ingredients require additives if they are to withstand warehousing, high heat and humidity, Cornell's McLellan explains.

What home-mix-makers may really find in commercial mixes that they can't find in cookbooks is a consistency that does not depend on skill. Mixes are so consistent that some home bakers use them as ingredients in other recipes.

"We allow contestants in the Pillsbury Bake-Off to use brownie mixes as an ingredient," reports Marlene Johnson, director of product communications for Pillsbury. "The contestants think of it as chocolate flour.'

Doctoring the mix

Sharon Tyler Herbst, author of the upcoming "Food Lover's Guide to Chocolate and Vanilla" (Morrow, $18, to be published in May), has her own recommendations for doctoring brownie mix:

"I add things to brownie mixes. To deepen taste and color, I always have a jar of instant espresso and add 1 tablespoon; a tablespoon of cocoa makes them more chocolatey; soaked dried cherries are wonderful (especially soaked in liqueur); and to make magic with the chocolate, a couple teaspoons of pure vanilla extract."

Even manufacturers of mixes have been fiddling around with them. Regular brownie mixes sit on supermarket shelves with premium mixes that boast chocolate chunks, chocolate chips, cheesecake swirls, dark chocolate, double fudge, low-fat, fat-free and organic.

Jim Dodge, vice-president of the New England Culinary Institute and baking expert, won't condemn brownie mixes outright. "I understand the ease of the mixes. If I were a parent with a couple of kids, I'd have a cupboard full of them. What concerns me more is if people never try to make things from a full recipe."

But for many consumers, the mixes will more than suffice. They find them quick, easy and reliable. And time is at a premium for the core group of consumers who buy brownie mixes. As Pillsbury's Marlene Johnson explains, "Females 35 to 45 years old in households with children are the primary purchasers."

So brownies are the '90s-style indulgence for kids and their moms. The familiar brownies are getting fudgier and the varieties more numerous, but the one consistent trend is toward mixes. As Harry Balzer observed in the NPD Group's tracking of American eating patterns, "It's the form of food that's changing in America, not the food."