The Sugar Bar

Chocolate is back on the scene! Essays have been sent to the office and filed, so I came home and thought – Why the hell not?! It’s 4 days to Easter Sunday so let’s pump this up.

If you love cream cheese as much as I do, then this is the recipe for you. The brownies are best served warm too because then the cheese is all soft and gooey and just blends so well into the brownie when you bite into it. You would have thought the cheese wouldn’t have stayed its shape but it does, so warming this baby up before eating is a definite must-do for the ultimate chocolate experience.

Taken from Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess, it’s one of the simplest brownie recipes ever – you definitely cannot go wrong with this and the ingredients are so basic, simple and good. It’s literally a 1) get your ingredients, 2) quick mix, 3) whack it in the oven type of recipe. And I assure you this is such a moist and extra-delish brownie. For an afterlunch pudding or just a quick snack between meals – this is a must-try. I deviated a little from the original recipe by cutting down the sugar and replacing a tiny bit of caster sugar with dark molasses for a deeper, sexier flavour.

Cream Cheese Dark Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients

125g dark chocolate
125g unsalted butter
2 large eggs
300g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
75g plain flour (this was 2/3 cup for me)
pinch of salt
200g cold cream cheese

Preheat oven to 180d Celsius.
Melt the chocolate and butter over a bain marie. Once melted, put aside to cool abit. Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla together. Then pour this into the chocolate mixture and mix. Add the dry ingredients and mix till just combined. Pour half of this into your prepared pan.
Then layer this with the cream cheese. Pour the rest of the brownie batter of this and using a rubber spatula or back of a spoon, smooth out the batter so it covers the cream cheese.
Bake for 20min (as suggested by Nigella, but mine took about 30min). The top should be slightly paled and dry but a cake tester poked within should reveal a still-sticky centre.
Cool for about 10min but cut the brownie into your square sections whilst it’s warm. Remove when cool as it’ll be easier to lift out then. Eat warm with whipped double cream or ice cream.

Mmmmm.