Cream Cheese Brownies
Fudgy chocolate brownies with a swirl of sweet cream cheese through the batter, baked for 35 minutes.
Photograph credit: Cream Cheese Brownies - 11886160323 by Thriving Vegetarian · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Cream Cheese Brownies: Step by Step
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Heat the oven to 175°C / 345°F. Line a 20 cm square tin. Melt the butter and chocolate, stir until smooth and cool for 5 minutes.
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Whisk the 200 g sugar, eggs and vanilla for 2 minutes. Stir in the chocolate, then fold in the 80 g flour, cocoa and salt. Spread in the tin.
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Beat the cream cheese, 50 g sugar, egg yolk and 1 tbsp flour until smooth.
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Dollop the cream cheese mixture over the batter and swirl with a knife.
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Bake for 35 minutes. Cool in the tin, then chill for 1 hour before cutting into 16.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Pan and tin size.
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Things to Watch For
- Beat the cream cheese until completely smooth.
- Swirl lightly for marbling.
- Chill before cutting.
A Little Background
This is what to bake in the first week of autumn, when the oven goes back on and a tin of something chocolatey seems like the right idea. The marbled top of a cream cheese brownie is the visual draw, but the real reason to make it is the contrast between the dark, bitter-sweet chocolate and the tangy, creamy swirl.
The brownie batter is a standard fudgy mix of melted chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs, with a little flour. Make it first and spread it in the tin. The cream cheese mixture is softened cream cheese beaten with sugar, an egg yolk and a spoon of flour for body, and a splash of vanilla. Beat it until smooth, with no lumps, since lumps do not melt in the oven.
Dollop, then drag. Drop spoonfuls of the cream cheese mixture over the batter and draw a knife through in loose figure-of-eight passes. Keep the knife near the surface. Dig down and you will mix the two completely and lose the marbling; a few strokes are all it needs.
Bake until a skewer comes out with moist crumbs and the cream cheese swirls are just set. Cool the brownies completely in the tin, then chill for 1 hour before cutting. The cold firms the cream cheese so that the squares slice cleanly.
To Go With It
Coffee · Cold milk · Fresh raspberries · Vanilla ice cream
Storing Leftovers
Keeps in the fridge for 4 days.
Questions People Ask
How long does Cream Cheese Brownies take to make?
20 minutes of preparation and 35 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of Chilling, so allow 1 hour 55 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 16.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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