AUBURN — Patrice Currie has rolled out gourmet brownie flavors like Did You Say Bacon? and Rocky Roads of Maine and named her new company after Maine slang for pretty darn great.
The Auburn native hopes she’s got a hit on her hands with HUM-DINGAH! Brownies.
Her tagline: “It’s a Maine thing …”
Currie said she’s worked in the food industry for decades, since taking a part-time job in high school at No Tomatoes restaurant in Auburn as a short-order cook.
“I really enjoyed doing it and from there, one thing led to another,” Currie said. “I started managing kitchens and restaurants and became a restaurant owner. I knew at some point, even after I ended the restaurant, I still wanted to do something else, I wasn’t sure what it was. Here I am, making brownies.”
In the 1990s, Currie owned the restaurant Caper’s downtown for almost four years. Her made-from-scratch gourmet brownie recipe dates to then. The idea for HUM-DINGAH! took hold at her current job, as a food and beverage supervisor for Mercy Hospital in Portland.
Over the holidays, Currie started bringing in treats for coworkers who quickly dubbed it “Brownie Mondays.”
“(I) just thought it would be a little gesture,” Currie said. “Everybody’s reaction was, oh my gosh, these brownies are so good! I got such a good response to it, I thought, hmm, maybe this is what I should be doing, and that’s how it all began. They were like my testers.”
They told her add more nuts, add more filing or don’t change a thing. By February, she was selling them in the Mercy cafeteria at both of the hospital’s locations.
Four months later, she’s up to 20 flavors, making 15 to 20 dozen a week.
HUM-DINGAH!s are available at the Town Landing Market in Falmouth, Coffee By Design inside L.L.Bean in Freeport and at Bates College’s Bobcat Den and Bowdoin College’s campus convenience store during the school year.
She’s working on setting up a site for online orders.
Currie uses her commute to think of flavor combinations. Sea Salty Caramel. SmOrr’s Island. Wild Maine Blueberry.
“I started thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder how this would go …’ I like being creative, inventive,” she said. “I had someone come up to me, ‘Patrice, have you ever considered doing a bacon brownie?’ I’m like, ‘Did you say bacon?’ That’s how I got the name.”
And a gourmet brownie with crumbled, caramelized bacon was born. She’s also invented the Brownie-Whoop!, a thick plain brownie halved and filled with strawberry, cherry, java jive, sea salt caramel or peanut butter cream.
“It’s all natural, no preservatives,” she said. “They don’t have a long shelf life on them, but they’re nice, they’re fudgy, they’re moist and I can guarantee you’re going to get the same brownie every time you order it.”
Ten dozen Double Chocolate Brownies were gifted to Edward Little High School’s Project Graduation earlier this month. It’s her alma mater.
HUM-DINGAH! is a solo operation, with Currie baking three to four nights a week at four to six hours at a stretch.
“Right now I have one oven — it’s pretty much going quite a bit,” she said. “I’m usually home by 5:30. If I’m baking, I’m baking by 6 at the latest, I don’t waste any time at all.”
She does her own packaging, makes her own labels. It’s a lot to juggle with her full-time job, and she’d like for this to perhaps someday be a full-time job.
“(Her mother) was a nursing supervisor at St. Mary’s and had six children to take care of and she also had a big home and garden and somehow managed to pull it off,” Currie said. “I sometimes remind myself of my mother.”
Fittingly, too, her mother worked at her own parents’ bakery run out of their Van Buren home.
“My mother used to help her parents bake bread and pies,” Currie said. “If you want a business to work, you’ve got to keep at it.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
Appalachian Trail brownies from Hum-Dingah! Brownies of Auburn.
Rocky Roads of Maine brownies from Hum-Dingah! Brownies of Auburn.
Coconut Almond brownies from Hum-Dingah! Brownies of Auburn.
A batch of Rocky Roads of Maine brownies from Hum-Dingah! Brownies of Auburn is packaged and ready for sale.
Patrice Currie holds some Rocky Roads of Maine, left, and Appalachian Trail brownies she baked for her new business, HUM-DINGAH! Brownies at her home in Auburn.
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