Chunky Cheesecake Brownies

I may have mentioned this before, but my adoration of cheesecake goes back a long way. The Cheesecake Factory is one of my favorite restaurants, and many years ago I made the (possibly ill-advised) resolution to try every kind of cheesecake on their menu. (Still haven’t made it–I keep getting stuck on Adam’s Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple. How can I choose apple when chocolate and peanut butter are being paired with cheesecake in my general vicinity?) When my husband Anthony proposed to me 10+ years ago, he did so by composing a giant cheesecake made of different slices from the Cheesecake Factory. He knew I would I would say yes, but the cheesecake didn’t hurt. I wish I had a picture of it. In fact, I wish I had a replica of it.

A year later at our wedding, the wedding cake was–you guessed it–cheesecake! My dear college roommate and baking whiz Brittany generously made chocolate and white chocolate raspberry cheesecakes for our guests, supplemented by plain ones from Costco. Thankfully, Anthony was kind enough not to shove any cheesecake up my nose during the feed-each-other-cake portion of the reception. As much as I love cheesecake, I don’t think I’d love it lodged in my nasal cavities.

All this being said, the weird thing is that I myself have never actually made a cheesecake. It all comes down to the lame excuse that I don’t own a springform pan. I know, go to Target and get a stinking springform pan, right? Well, maybe tomorrow. For today, I have these delicious chunky cheesecake brownies. Brownie + cheesecake = at least as good as a regular cheesecake, in my book, and definitely worthy of a special occasion like Valentine’s Day tomorrow! Plus, if you, like me, don’t own a springform pan (and don’t have time to go through the rigamarole of the water bath/lengthy baking time/chilling overnight of cheesecake making) you’re in luck–these can be whipped up in short order and baked in a regular old 9-inch Pyrex. Cut into squares to show off their chocolate-chunky cheesecake layer, place on a fancy serving dish, and you have a lovely dessert to serve your special someone.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Chunky Cheesecake Brownies
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

For the cheesecake layer:

1 8-oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

For the brownies:

1/4 c. butter
1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 c. sugar
2 eggs
2/3 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch square baking dish.

2. Make the cheesecake layer: mix cream cheese, sugar, and egg until thoroughly combined. Stir in 1 c. chocolate chips. Set aside.

3. Make the brownie layer: in the microwave or over a double boiler, melt butter and chocolate chips in a large bowl. Mix in sugar and eggs, then flour, baking powder, and salt until evenly blended.

4. Pour half the brownie mixture in the prepared dish. Spread the cheesecake layer on top of the brownie layer, then top with remaining brownie mixture. Swirl with a knife for a marbled effect, if desired.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Carrot Cake

Sometimes I wonder how certain vegetables have been inducted into the Hall of Acceptable Dessert Ingredients while others stand dolefully outside the gates. Carrots and zucchini, for example, are somehow perfectly admissible in cakes and quick breads, whereas mushrooms and eggplant are not. (Then again, I can’t imagine requesting a mushroom cake for my birthday–can you? If you said yes, I’m not sure we can be friends…) I suppose with carrots, it’s their innate sweetness that makes them fit alongside butter, sugar, and flour in a cake. For zucchini, I have to dig deep. Maybe some zucchini farmer had a bumper crop and made a convincing sales pitch for grating it up and putting it in bread. And here we are in the 21st century with a National Zucchini Day on the books. (April 25th, if you were wondering.) This zucchini farmer must have been one smoooooth operator.

Although I’ve never really gotten used to the idea of zucchini in a sweet package, every year my husband requests carrot cake for his birthday and I am happy to oblige. There *may* have been a year or two when I made a box mix while he was at work and passed it off as homemade. But no longer! Now that I have my chopaholic food processor, grating 3 cups of carrots in a matter of minutes takes a major chunk of the work out of making carrot cake from scratch. (It also nearly took a major chunk out of my hand before I located the pusher that had gone missing.)

This particular recipe has been a success for me in the past, so for my husband’s birthday yesterday, I tried it again. It totally passed the test–light but moist with a hint of cinnamon sweetness and the perfect amount of rich tang in the cream cheese frosting. Definitely a winner even for those who (like me) remain somewhat skeptical about vegetables in dessert.

Just don’t ask me to try carrot pie. That’s taking the idea entirely too far.

Carrot Cake
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

For the cake:

4 eggs
3/4 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. applesauce
1 3/4 c. white sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 c. grated carrots

For the frosting:

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. butter, softened
4 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbsp. milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch cake pans.

2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, vegetable oil, applesauce, sugar, and vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Pour into prepared pans.

3. Bake in preheated oven 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool at least ten minutes in the pan, then carefully remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.*

4. To make the frosting: in a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Add milk a little at a time and mix until frosting consistency is to your liking. Frost cake as desired when it has cooled completely.

I ate this piece. And it was delicious.

*If you’d like to make the cake ahead of time and frost later, here’s an awesome hack: spray the inside of two freezer bags with cooking spray and place one cake layer in each. No losing the top of the cake to sticky plastic wrap!

Chocolate Leaf Tutorial

Weren’t you just saying to yourself, “What I need right now is a tutorial on how to make chocolate leaves”? Wow, that’s so weird, because I’m about to give you one! I absolutely adore these chocolate beauties as a fancy-in-a-flash garnish for cakes, alongside ice cream, or atop a chocolate cream pie. Not only are they easier than sin to make, but they taste way better than fondant, which is what you’d usually use to make a pretty, edible adornment. With the holidays coming, these would be a lovely way to outdo your sister-in-law enhance a festive dessert.

So how, you may ask, do you make them? Do you need a special mold or complicated equipment? Nope. You just need chocolate and access to a tree…or a bush…or a flower pot. Seriously. Here’s the step-by-step lowdown:

How to Make Chocolate Leaves:

(Original idea from Secrets from a Caterer’s Kitchen by Nicole Aloni…which, by the way, is a fabulous book for party planning)

Ingredients:

Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Materials:

Leaves
Wax Paper
Silicone basting brush

1. Pick pliable, intact leaves from a rose bush, bougainvillea, eucalyptus tree, etc.

2. Thoroughly wash and dry leaves.

3. Melt desired amount of chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a small bowl in the microwave. (1/2 cup yields about 12 rose leaves.)

4. Using silicone basting brush, paint melted chocolate onto the backs of the leaves until completely covered, except for the stem.

5. Place covered leaves on a plate lined with wax paper and refrigerate until chocolate has cooled/hardened.

6. Holding the leaf stem, peel the chocolate imprint off of the leaf.

7. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place until ready for use.

Garnish!

Halloween Candy Bark

When you have little kids, there are lots of wonderful bonuses to the weeks following Halloween. You get to bask in the memories of your children in their ridiculously adorable costumes:

You get to breathe a sigh of relief that it’s all over and you don’t have to hand-stitch any more Super Mario hats:

And most importantly, you get to eat their candy when they’re sleeping. (Don’t tell them I said that.) The downside of this, of course, is that you frequently end up eating waaaayy too much candy. And so do they. To combat this sugar juggernaut this year, I decided to make use of the overload of goodies that ended up in my pantry after trick-or-treating–both from my kids’ bags and from what we didn’t pass out–and make candy bark for my husband to take to work. (This way other people get all the calories I’m trying to avoid….muwahahaha.) I found recipes for candy bark online, but didn’t have the ingredients most of them listed, so I decided to wing it. (It’s kind of hard to screw up graham crackers, chocolate, and candy, right?) The result was scrumptious! My husband’s co-workers downed them and asked for more the next day. So if you’re reading this because you ate this treat at a certain development/design company in Tempe, AZ….this one’s for you!

Halloween Candy Bark

Ingredients:

14 whole graham cracker sheets (or 28 half sheets)
1 12 oz. bag semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 tsp. vegetable oil, divided
1/2 c. peanuts, chopped
3 c. Halloween candy of your choice
1/2 c. white chocolate chips

Directions:

Line a large cookie sheet with wax or parchment paper. Spray lightly with cooking spray. Lay graham crackers closely together on cookie sheet until sheet is filled.

Using a vegetable chopper or a sharp knife, chop Halloween candy into small pieces. Mix in a medium bowl with peanuts. Set aside.

In the microwave or a double boiler, melt chocolate chips. Stir in 1 tsp. vegetable oil. Pour over graham crackers and spread out until crackers are covered. Sprinkle peanut-candy mixture evenly over chocolate. Refrigerate until chocolate has hardened, at least 15 minutes.

In the microwave or double boiler, melt white chocolate chips. Stir in 1/2 tsp. vegetable oil. Drizzle melted white chocolate over the top of the bark. (For perfect drizzling, place melted white chocolate in a Ziploc bag with a small hole snipped off one bottom corner. Squeeze bag gently to drizzle.)

Return pan to the refrigerator until white chocolate has hardened, at least another 15 minutes. Remove bark from wax paper and place on a large cutting board. Cut into bite-sized pieces. Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

Pumpkin Sherbet

I realize there have been a lot of dessert posts on here lately, but indulge me (or indulge yourself) with one more. Today is October 1st, a day I have been impatiently awaiting for quite awhile now. It’s not that anything in particular is actually going to happen today–it’s just that now that it’s October, I officially feel like it’s fall. (September temps in Phoenix are mostly still in the 100’s, so now that it’s under 100, I can pretend I live in a place where fall-ish things will start happening, like color-changing trees and sweaters and a chill in the air. It’s a farce, but it’s an enjoyable farce.) Anyway, if it’s finally Fallâ„¢ I’m going to feel free to go out of my gourd…..that’s right,

PUMPKIN CRAAAAAZZYYY!

Let’s take this opportunity for the following confession: in the last 24 hours alone, I made three pumpkin recipes: this pumpkin sorbet–an ideal choice for those of us still experiencing 90 degree weather–pumpkin muffins, and pumpkin snickerdoodles. (Hopefully I don’t get any calls from my kids’ schools from an alarmed nurse informing me my children have turned orange.) The slightly embarrassing thing about this is that I have been complaining to anyone who will listen lately about the Pumpkin Spice Juggernaut. You know what I’m talking about. If you live on planet Earth, you will have seen how Starbucks has been tooting its own pumpkin spice horn for like a month already…and then M & Ms got on board with its own version…and Hershey Kisses…and See’s is making pumpkin spice lollipops. I’m telling you, it’s

PUMPKIN PANDEMONIUM!

But you know what? Why fight it? It’s inevitable. Pumpkin is here to stay. And I’ll proudly state that several of my family members hail from the Pumpkin Capitol of the U.S., Morton, Illinois. This pumpkin sherbet is a great way to spice up your pumpkin repertoire. (Get it?) It’s a creamy, very pumpkin-y, lightened up alternative to pumpkin ice cream.

Let’s do this. It’s ON, pumpkin. IT’S. ON.

Pumpkin Sherbet
(Adapted from Skinnytaste)

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c. 2% milk
1/2 c. plus 2 Tbsp. sugar
1 c. canned pumpkin or pumpkin puree
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
pinch cloves
pinch salt

Directions:

In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, pumpkin, and heat over medium heat. Bring to a full boil while whisking, then reduce heat to low, and simmer for thirty seconds.

Remove from the heat, and add the vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove, and stir.

Transfer the mixture to a bowl, and chill in the refrigerator until cold, anywhere from 3 hours to overnight. When chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Makes 2 3/4 cups.