Doesn’t the name alone sound indulgent?
I realised that despite launching The Brownie Blog a few months ago I haven’t made brownies – or posted anything on that blog – in ages. I had some blueberries left over from another recipe (these chocolate blueberry cakes) and I also had some of the blueberry flavour icing that I’d made up from a packet from Sugar & Crumbs as I’d made a little too much. I wondered if I could incorporate the two into brownies and remembered seeing some nice brownie recipes in my Hummingbird Bakery book. They had a recipe for raspberry cheesecake brownies so I decided to borrow that idea, using blueberries instead, but rather than blending the blueberries into cream to go on top, I used the leftover blueberry icing.
These are pretty easy to make – I knocked them up in about an hour around 10pm one evening!
You can find the recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book or online on GoodtoKnow (the website for various women’s magazines including Essentials), so I won’t repeat it all here. I will instead describe what I did.
To start, make the brownie base. The Hummingbird recipe uses icing sugar instead of caster sugar which gave the brownies a different texture; they were nice (especially when they were a day or so old) but if I made this again I would probably use a more traditional brownie recipe for the base.
Preheat oven to 170C. Melt 200g chocolate (the recipe calls for plain, but I used milk chocolate) – I did it in the microwave. Cream 200g butter or margarine with 250g icing sugar then add 3 eggs and 110g plain flour. Stir in the melted chocolate.
Pour into a square baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.
Next make the cheesecake layer – mix 400g cream cheese (not the low fat kind), 150g icing sugar, dash of vanilla flavouring and two eggs until you have a smooth mixture. Pour over the top of the brownie layer and then bake in the oven. I found mine took a lot longer than the recipe called for so I’d advise baking for about 40 minutes then checking it to see if the cheesecake is still wobbly or the brownie still raw. You don’t want it to go brown on top but it does need to be cooked through – I think mine took about an hour.
Leave to cool; if you want the fruit and cream topping see the recipe instructions (link as above); I spread the remainder of my Sugar & Crumbs blueberry icing on the top of the cheesecake layer and topped with my leftover blueberries.
This sliced easily into squares – I cut it into fairly small pieces since each piece was quite deep. I took them into work and they were very popular!
