CHICAGO, Aug 23, 2006/ FW/ --- The brownie is turning 100 this year. It all came about when a long-ago baker tried a different way to make cookies - and instead tapped into a chocolate goldmine.

The brownie, which nearly 80 percent of Americans eat, has fairly humble beginnings. Some say it was a chocolate cake that fell and got served anyway. Others say its name was borne of its creator, a woman named, you guessed it: Brownie.

Food historians say the brownie was first mentioned in Fannie Farmer's 1905 Boston Cooking School Cook Book, which was a version of an earlier recipe for cookies.

Brownies didn't really become popular until the 1920s and were largely confined to America. Around the end of World War I, people started looking for foods that were more convenient, and the brownie was a dessert that could be eaten with your hands or taken along on a ride in the country in the newly popular automobile.

Brownies are still popular, with mixes being used in place of scratch-made, but with most of the ingredients being the same these hundred years later.