Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

orig recipe from hellyeahrecipes - and for once i didn't change a thing.

notes? if you have already got cup measurers; they're a good investment. i got mine for a couple of quid at morrisons; and if you bake a lot, lots of recipes on U.S. sites will use cups.
a small bar of dark chocolate should be enough (i bought a huge bar of bourneville and only used 2 rows. more for me!); a 200ml tub of cream cheese is the right amount.

everything below is copied and pasted from the orig post; italics are my notes - find the orig post through the above link!

ingredients
1/2 cup butter
2-oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp red food coloring
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt

8-oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract


Preheat oven to 350F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 8 inch metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up two sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends. (This will make it easy to remove the bars from the pan after they have baked.) Butter the parchment. i never bother with any of this cos i'm lazy - tin foil across the bottom of the pan will do the trick, right?

In a small, heatproof bowl, melt butter and chocolate together. Stir until combined and very smooth. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and red food coloring. Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Add flour and salt and stir until just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain.

Pour into prepared pan and spread into an even layer.

To prepare cheesecake mixture, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in a medium bowl until smooth. Distribute the cheesecake mixture in 8 dollops over batter in the pan.

Swirl in with a knife or spatula. i was concerned at this point that my batters were both pretty runny and the cheesecake mix was just going to sink but it seemed fine - swirling in is very much an aesthetic thing, and i was quite happy with my dollops.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until brownies and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cheesecake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned.

Let cool completely in pan on a cooling rack before lifting out the parchment paper to remove the brownies.

- jenn.

Lemon Slices.

iphone pics are decent enough, right?

so, cake recipes aren't my forte, but that's mostly cos i gave up on weighing ingredients ages ago. and yknow? my cakes always turn out moist and delicious, so it's all good.

these are dairy free, cos i used soy milk and soy butter. just fyi.

sieve self raising flour and sugar into a bowl, then add an egg and some butter (i use about 1/5 of a tub of butter...) and stir in. add a few teaspoons of lemon juice (as lemony as you'd like!) and keep adding milk to the bowl as you whisk until you have batter - you want it thin, but not too thin. if the batter is too thick it won't be moist!

cook at a low-ish heat (our oven was on about 150 and it's a fan oven) for about 20-25 mins - i cooked these in a rectangular tin, which isn't as deep as a cake tin but deeper than an oven tray, and it wasn't brown on the top but was cooked all the way through. perfect.

if you don't know, cakes are done when you can stick a knife in the centre and there's no batter on it when you take it back out.

i let them cool for a little while (while i ran to the shop for icing sugar), then mixed up some icing sugar and water to a thick consistency and poured it over the top; let it set a little; then made some more (a little thinner) and added yellow food colouring, drizzling that over the top too.

The Cake Debate.

Me and my housemate Luke (that's him taking macro pics above; with his latest creations) have a bit of a rivalry with cakes. I don't make them much, he probs whips up a batch or a big cake once every couple of weeks, but we have different styles.

My cakes are (as I was always taught) sifted dry ingredients first with gradually added wet ingredients and whisked till light and fluffy. It's a testament to this method that my cakes are always awesome; but I always use a simple flavour - lemon sponge, chocolate sponge, butterfly cakes... Preference, because, I'm not a fan of fruit in my cakes (if I wanted fruit, I'd eat fruit, goddammit) and if I have a sponge craving, let's face it, any flavour will do. No need to get fancy.

Luke makes his the wrong way round - wet ingredients first - and doesn't sieve up his flour, but he's much more adventurous with his flavours - raspberry and white chocolate is his favourite; and right now there is also a very zesty lemon cake in our fridge, as well as the above cupcakes (which are banana with white chocolate topping, btw). As a result, his cakes are often hit and miss (SIEVING IS THE KEY; but does he listen?) whether on flavour or moistness, which is key.

I think I'm in a bit of a minority; the other people in the house (OK, mostly Dean, maybe Aaron. Gemma doesn't do cake) tend to either love or hate Luke's dessert endeavours while mine enjoy a middle ground - better than his disasters but not as good as his triumphs. Personally I think your own brand can't be beat, and the last lemon cake I made was the moistest I've ever tasted. The main difference between us is he is willing to spend stupid amounts of fresh fruit and flavours for it, while I just chuck in whatever is round the shop/I have in the house.

The testament is, Luke sometimes has to throw mouldy cake out.

Has this happened to me, ever?

NO.

Suck it, McNaney.

Course, it's best to throw the cakes out when this occurs...