Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Melissa of Life in a Peanut Shell. She chose the Espresso Cheesecake Brownies, which have a brownie layer topped with an espresso/cream cheese layer and then topped with a sour cream layer. Yum! You can get the complete recipe for the brownies on Melissa’s blog. These sounded so good and I couldn’t wait to make them.

There are quite a few steps to making these brownies, which is not uncommon in a layered bar cookie. None of the steps are all that difficult, but with baking and chilling and all of those things, these took some time to make. In a way it was kind of nice, as I was able to do some other things around the house in between the steps of making the brownies. The brownies are basically a one-bowl brownie, where you melt the butter and chocolate together and then add the other ingredients. The cheesecake layer was also quite straight-forward. You are supposed the put ¾ of the brownie batter in the pan, top with the cheesecake layer, dot with the remaining brownie batter and then swirl. Mine just did not swirl nicely. It’s like the brownie batter was too heavy and when I tried to swirl it, it just sank to the bottom. I had originally planned to omit the sour cream layer, since I swirly-topped brownie can be quite beautiful, but since you couldn’t really see the swirl on my brownies, I went ahead and did the sour cream topping.

I chilled mine overnight and I’m glad I did. They were super easy to cut and they are quite a substantial brownie. Dorie suggests cutting the brownies into 4 big pieces, removing the pieces from the pan and then cutting each quarter into 4 pieces. I did this and it worked great, but these cookies are so rich that I think that they are a little too big. It would be harder to cut, but I think that I would cut these into 25 pieces rather than 16. The espresso is very strong, and you really need the sour cream layer to balance all of the flavors, so I am glad that I ended up following the recipe completely.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 104 and 105.