Mrs. Capt. Dave tells the story of her famous fudge brownie treats:
I’ve been making brownies for as long as I can remember. All the way through college for my friends, and in my twenties I made them for all my neighbors and friends at church.
I started to have fun with different ingredients, creating all sorts of unusual brownie types. I tried peanut butter, chocolate chips, add-ins like jam and M&Ms. And my neighbor’s all got to be my happy guinea pigs.
When I first moved onto my boat I had a little oven and it reminded me of my Easy Bake Oven days, but I was able to still make brownies in small batches and my slip neighbors loved it. After Dave and I got married, I was still making a batch of brownies every week for friends and family and one day as he was heading out the door for a trip, I suggested that he take some brownies with him for his passengers. It started to become a bit of a routine and pretty soon our passengers were asking for them in advance, when they would make a reservation, wanting to be sure that those brownies would be on board as well.
From that point on it became a standard part of every trip that we did. My dad had retired and I got him involved helping me make the brownies everyday as our business grew and I needed more brownies to share. It was my dad who suggested that we make them in cupcake muffin tins and it was an amazing idea because it meant every brownie had a little bit of a crispy edge and a gooey center.
Pretty soon, every day we had an assembly line going and the house always smelled like brownies. A few years ago after we had made well over 120,000 brownies in my kitchen, the health department stopped by and asked where we were making all these brownies! When we explained we were making them at home, they regretfully told us that that was not going to work moving forward (even though we were never selling the brownies, they had become a standard part of our trip). They needed to be made in a standard commercial bakery.
Brownie-Related Reviews
After a lot of hunting we found an amazing family-run bakery that was willing to make them for us exactly to the specifications that we had made them at home and Mrs. Captain Dave’s brownies became what they are today. They still taste the same!
I love giving them away on every trip because I feel as though it’s a part of me that gets to be there and at least I’ve gotten to share a little part of myself with all of our passengers. I think it’s wonderful when passengers say that the best part of the trip was the brownies! And occasionally I even get nominated as employee of the month for my brownies! I would never have dreamed when I first started the brownies would become such a big part of who we’ve become.