Cream Cheese Brownies

Next to the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, there are few combinations that I love more than chocolate and cream cheese. Whether it’s in the form of a cheesecake, or something like these brownies, I swoon. I love how the richness of the chocolate is cut with the cool creaminess of the cream cheese. I have been wanted to find a perfect cream cheese brownie recipe for the longest time, and finally made it my mission this week to get it done. These brownies are an amazing blend of rich brownie and perfectly creamy cheesecake. In fact, there are very much the exact inverse of the Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake. Instead of a cheesecake with chunks of brownie in it, here we have brownies with swirls of cheesecake. Such a lovely little ying and yang.

This is a basic brownie recipe that is layered with a cream cheese filling, and then marbled to create layers and swirls of cheesecake within the brownie. It’s the prettiest version of this type of brownie that I think I’ve seen. I love them!

A word of caution: be very careful not to overbake these. I would recommend checking them about 5 minutes before they were supposed to be done. I usually do that, but got a little sidetracked, so these baked for the minimum time (50 minutes) and they were a little too done – the toothpick test came out clean, when ideally it comes out with moist crumbs when you’re dealing with brownies. So just a head’s up that you may want to check on them a little early. Otherwise, enjoy every sinful bite of decadence!

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