Cheesecake Brownies

What is the point of a recipe which leaves a single egg white lurking forgotten in the fridge? I can understand a recipe using say, 6 egg yolks - at least then you have a decent amount of whites to use up in a different recipe. But one egg white hangs around until you finally throw it out three days later, or find it at the back of the freezer a year later, along with all the other single egg whites you froze, intending to use eventually. By then, they are so old that you still throw them out!

It was this annoyance which made me adjust the quantities of ingredients in David Lebovitz's recipe for Cheesecake Brownies, to incorporate what would be a leftover egg white (from the cheesecake mix) into the brownie batter. It worked really well too! The unintended change to the recipe was finding the packet of chocolate chips still under my oven gloves, while I was clearing up!! I chose this particular recipe because David Lebovitz uses metric measurements as well as cups, in his recipes. There are plenty of other Cheesecake Brownie recipes around - all very similar.

So, this is how I made Cheesecake Brownies

For the Brownie batter:
90g unsalted butter

125g dark chocolate - I used 75g of 85% chocolate and 50g of 72% chocolate

140g caster sugar
2 whole large eggs plus one egg white
80g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
For the Cheesecake mixture:
200g cream cheese, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk
75g caster sugar
a few drops vanilla extract

Method
Line a 8"(20cm) square cake pan with baking parchment. Pre-heat oven to 180C.
Melt the chocolate and butter in a large bowl, over a pan of simmering water, then beat in the sugar, followed by the eggs.
Fold in the flour, cocoa, vanilla extract and salt. Transfer the batter to the prepared tin. (The original recipe added 80g of chocolate chips to the batter.)
Beat together all the cheesecake ingredients until smooth.
Spoon the cheesecake mixture, in 9 blobs, onto the brownie batter. Use a blunt knife to swirl the cheesecake into the chocolate mix.
Bake for around 35 minutes, until the centre is just set. Cool in tin, then cut into portions - I cut into 12 generous pieces.

This looked really alarming when it came out of the oven, as the cheesecake mixture had risen well above the surface of the brownie. Fortunately, everything settled down to the same level as it cooled. There were one or two cracks in the surface where the cheesecake and brownie should have fused together, but nothing too disastrous. The brownie had a smooth fudgy texture and the cheesecake mixture added a clean, almost lemony flavour, to the brownie - a great contrast to the rich brownie. I'm not sure they really needed the chocolate chips!

Naughty, naughty - no eating and drinking at the computer!