Cream Cheese Marbled Brownies

Life is more or less back to routine, after a host of holidays, like Chinese New Year, Christmas, etc. Gosh, and it's nearly the end of March. So, with routine-ness, comes Tuesday night family dinners, my ready catchment of guinea pigs for new dessert experiments, as my sister and her family come over for dinner. Her children eat like birds, (and I don't mean the big birds like eagles, who eat whole rabbits....those are MY children), so getting them to try my baking is like a feat worthy of popping a bottle of Dom Perignon.

Anyway, Tuesdays are also gym days, more or less etched in stone. So, for dessert, either I make something that requires chilling overnight, in which case I'd have made it on Monday, OR, a quickie, like last week's Mint Choc Squares. Since that turned out so well, I thought I'd take another page out of the Golden Chocolate Book, and try these babies.

Pic taken from Golden Chocolate Book, by Page One

The above picture is actually from the book, obviously. Looks too perfect to be something I'd done.

Anyway, the reason why I chose this recipe is
1. It had all my favourite ingredients, cream cheese, chocolate, and orange
2. It looked quick enough to make

Here's the recipe:

Cream Cheese Filling
250gm cream cheese
1/4 cup castor sugar
zest of one orange
juice from the same orange
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 egg

1. Basically, either blitz the cheese and sugar until creamy, and add in the remaining stuff until it forms a nice smooth batter like consistency OR
2. Use a mixer to do the above.
3. Set aside

Chocolate Mixture
250gm chocolate (I mix 100gm bittersweet + 150 gm normal premium cooking)
60 gm butter
3/4 cup sugar (or less)
1/2 cup flour
2 eggs + 2 tablespoons cold water
2 teaspoons vanilla essence (or extract, if you have the budget)

1. Melt the chocolate with the butter.
2. After it's cooled a bit, add in the remaining stuff and stir. Yes, it's that simple.
3. Pour batter into a 8" square pan, (lined, of course).
4. Add in the cream cheese mixture in dollops, and use either a skewer or fork or palette knife to give it the swirly marbly effect.
5. Bake in 180C oven for 35-40 minutes. (although book said 25-30 minutes, at 25 minutes the entire thing was still wobbly)

Serve with pouring cream, or vanilla ice cream. Warm.

Verdict: The brownies were absolutely scrumptious. The texture of the chocolate part was dense and chocolatey, almost gooey, and the cream cheese with the lovely orange tang complemented the chocolate very well. The pouring cream neutralises any cloying sweetness that might or might not attack your palate, depending on your sugar tolerance. If you're drinking teh tarik a the mamak everyday, you probably won't find it sweet enough.

Sister who hesitantly took half a square did end up with seconds. We all agreed it would have gone jolly well with a cup of coffee, but since we didn't have decaf on hand, none of us were willing to risk a sleepless night for the sake of our palates.

Below is the picture of what the previous post mint squares are supposed to look like, in the book. That's where I got the stacking idea, but obviously, mine was tilting like the water tower in Teluk Intan (or if there are any foreign readers, for their benefit, the Leaning Tower of Pisa)

Pic taken from Golden Chocolate Book, by Page One