Chubby Bunny

Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies

Today I would give myself an F in baking. The lesser of two evils will be Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies.

I believe I got into making brownies from scratch, because it was fun and a certain someone liked brownies. It didn’t seem right to just whip something up from a box. So yes, I followed a recipe on the Hershey’s cocoa box and realized how easy it is to make brownies. Before then, I had only worked on baking cookies since I was little for Dad.

The decision to make brownies was a last-minute, on-a-whim decision. And I was bored of the usual routine, so I decided not to follow a recipe. Yes, this would probably be the reason for my downfall.

The goal was to get super fudgy brownies, like those they had catered at my Internship. As far as I know, fudgy brownies from scratch require melting the butter (rather than creaming it) and using more sugar, less flour. Most importantly, brownies need to be taken out of the oven earlier then usual. Else, the result would be towards the other end of the Brownie Continuum– cake-like brownies.

So I started melting the butter, throwing in chocolate that had seized from about a year ago (it keeps well in the fridge when enclosed in a sealed container) and adding sugar.

• 5 T butter, melted
• 2 T sugar
• 1/4 cup chocolate, melted
• Salt
• 2 eggs

I added Ovaltine for more chocolate and some salt to bring out the sweetness. The result, after some stirring (oh, always stir by hand when making brownies) was a thick, fudgy paste that exploded with a rich chocolate aroma. I thought I was going on the right track.Next I put together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mixed for even distribution. Mixing with a fork also aerates the flour, so my laziness will not have to resort to sifting it.

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/8-1/4 tsp baking powder

Put them together and what do you get?

Well, I got a really thick batter that required spreading with my off-set spatula. It is quite possible that unconsciously I led myself to a super thick batter for the sake of whipping out and using said spatula. Anyway, I decided the ~3/8 inch pre-baking thickness was insufficient.

It needed a cheesecake layer.
No problem.

Frantically, so the brownie batter wouldn’t dry up, I whipped up a layer of cheesecake to go over it.

• 4 ounces cream cheese
• 1/2 T sour cream
• < 1 T sugar
• Splash of vanilla
• 1 whole egg

And I whipped and I stirred and I gave in to use the electric hand-mixer instead. Let me tell you: room temperature cream cheese is much easier to work with. It took a while to work out all the lumps in the mix when I used cheese fresh from the fridge.

Alas. Once that was done, the 8 x 8 x 2 pan was popped into the oven for 35-40 minutes at 350°F.

In terms of taste, this is acceptable, but definitely not my best and not what I hoped to achieve today. The texture of the brownie is cake-like and dense; it is not too sweet, nor is it bitter. I would have liked something very moist and dense like a pudding (so it occurred to me to put pudding next time…) The cheesecake layer is pretty firm and a good accompaniment, so no complaints there.

But definitely, I need to be less shy about adding more sugar and more baking powder. The problem with adding too much baking powder is that it will often leave a bitter, awkward taste.