A few years back, this brownie recipe was published in The New York Times. 

It's a recipe for Katherine Hepburn's brownies and they, of course, look unreal. However, this wasn't any regular old recipe article, and that's entirely down to the comments section on the piece. Among all the mums who couldn't wait to try the recipe and the dads who said their kids were mad for a bit of baking, was a story from one woman about her own experience of making Katherine Hepburn's brownies. But Sydne Newberry didn't just give her opinion on the baked goods, she gave a mini-saga that was equal parts delicious, exciting, and a total cliff-hanger. She wrote:

“This has been my go-to brownie recipe for 30 years. In the ’80s, an acquaintance in Germany to whom I brought some of the brownies, and who considered herself a great cook, asked for the recipe but was never able to get it to work. She kept asking me what she was doing wrong and I was never able to solve her problem. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. and stole my husband!”

Confused? You should be. With no feasible explanation as to how (or why) her husband left her after the whole brownie debacle, Newberry disappeared into the night (or other comments sections, who can say for sure?) For over two years, people on the internet have been trying to figure out why Newberry's husband left her for this mysterious woman who couldn't get her brownies right. And now, they finally have an answer. The Cut reached out to Newberry to ask her what the hell happened. She, of course, was only delighted to explain the context behind her comment. Newberry began by saying that the "acquaintance" who eventually stole her husband was a "real food snob." She said the food snob just couldn't get the Hepburn recipe to work, no matter what she tried. The woman eventually got so frustrated that she started suggesting that Newberry had intentionally left something out of the recipe. The very idea! About three later, Newberry told The Cut, she ran into the woman again - who had since broken up with her husband. Newberry was soon confronted by a neighbour who asked her if she was okay with the food snob "fooling around" with her husband. She said she initially brushed the comment off before catching the woman and her husband in the act. Newberry issued her husband an ultimatum.

“He said he wanted to stay married to me, but then he immediately headed back to Germany for another ‘business’ trip! I took the opportunity of his absence to move out. A few months later, she was back but I never spoke another word to her.”

Newberry said that after all these years, she never figured out why the food snob's brownies went so wrong. Although, she also said that she "never cared to ask." Now, Newberry is remarried to a man whom she calls the love of her life. And the best part about the story? He loves her brownies.