Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars; smooth and creamy baked vanilla cheesecake on a double chocolate brownie base.
Warm weather. A food blogger’s bittersweet nemesis.
Ingredients can’t sit on the worktop for too long without softening beyond utility. Cooling things takes twice as long as it normally would on your breezy windowsill. You can’t sit your lovely baked goods in the beautiful direct sunlight for photographing for more than 10 minutes without them starting to melt. Oh, and people are too busy outside, tanning, and getting blackout drunk in the sun to think about your Chocolate Hazelnut Gelato recipe…
But as I sit here with my annual sunburn, I can’t complain.
Today I want to give you guys a recipe for something appropriate for both sun-lovers and shade-chasers. Something you can bake of an evening to have a delicious chilled and refreshing dessert in the fridge for days to come.
Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars. A perfect Maverick dessert. Combining, as all the best desserts do, the glorious pairing of rich and light.
The light, creamy, tanginess of baked cheesecake. The rich, dark, density of chocolate brownie.
Delicious enough in normal circumstances, obviously, but particularly lavish when scoffed straight from the fridge in the haste of cooling oneself down. You can dress these up to make them fancy-looking, like I tried to, or you can slice them into hefty slabs to be grabbed by hand. They would be an ideal post-picnic treat, a satisfying dessert after a salad dinner, or just a good excuse to eat cheesecake for breakfast when the sun is out.
These Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars might look a bit fiddly, but I promise you they are simpler than expected.
They were born, as most of my recipes are, out of necessity. I had a visceral hankering to bake and eat baked cheesecake (I’m less fond of the more common fridge-set variety we have here in the UK). When pulling all the various ingredients bought to make a baked cheesecake, I noticed I was missing the vital biscuit part of the biscuit base I’d fully intended to make. Thank feck for always having too much chocolate and butter in the house – brownies it is!
Essentially, these Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars are made from a half-batch of brownies, made for just mere minutes before topping with a dreamy cheesecake mixture, and baked low and slow. After a little cooling and chilling time, some slicing, and some decoration, you’ll have yourself a cracking wee pudding.
The topping on the bars you see picture is a few dollops of whipped cream with a little raspberry jam folded through. Additionally, some frozen raspberries found buried deep in the freezer and some Mikado sticks with the bare end broken off. Fancy, eh?
While you will need a bit of patience for these to bake and cool completely, they are worth every minute. Equally, they keep well in the fridge for a few days and you won’t have to worry about them melting and sliding about like a more 1970s-style fridge-set kind would.
As always, I used my favourite Cocoa Runners cocoa powder in this recipe. If you love baking chocolatey things, I’d definitely recommend trying it out. It carries such a bolder and fuller chocolate flavour than mass-market (and unethical) cocoa powders. You can find it here, and you can use code MaverickBaking10 for a cheeky 10% off!
Otherwise, you can be pretty flexible with the ingredients for these Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars. Milk chocolate can be subbed for dark chocolate, the toppings can easily customisable as so many things pair well with chocolate and vanilla. You could even make these into a more classic round cheesecake instead, slicing off triangles as you needed, rather than these little bars. Get creative, and enjoy!
Want to save these Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars? You can pin the image below!
To make these Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars, simply follow the recipe below:
Ingredients
For the brownie base:
- 125g (4 ½ oz) dark chocolate
- 115g (7 ½ tbsp) salted butter
- 35g (¼ cup) plain flour
- 30g (¼ cup) cocoa powder
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 125g (rounded ½ cup) caster sugar
For the baked cheesecake:
- 600g (22 oz) cream cheese
- 200g (1 cup) sour cream, creme fraiche or Greek yoghurt
- 3 large eggs
- 125g (rounded ½ cup) caster sugar
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
For the topping:
- 100ml (½ cup) of double or whipping cream
- 1 tbsp raspberry jam (optional)
- Handful of fresh or frozen raspberries (optional)
- Chocolate sticks, such as Mikado (optional)
Instructions
For the brownie base:
- Preheat your oven – 160°C / 140°C fan / 325°F / gas mark 3.
- Grease and line a tin to bake the bars in, both 20x20cm (8x8in) or 20x30cm (8x12in) tins have worked well for me.
- Chop up your butter and dark/milk chocolate and melt together gently in a heatproof bowl either in the microwave or over a pan of simmering water until smooth.
- While the chocolate and butter melt, weigh your flour and cocoa powder into a small bowl.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, egg yolk, and sugar until just combined.
- Once melted, pour the butter/chocolate mixture into the bowl of egg mixture and whisk to incorporate.
- Tip in the flour and cocoa mixture, and gently fold together with a spoon or spatula until just combined.
- Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Meanwhile make your cheesecake mixture!
For the baked cheesecake:
- Place all the cheesecake ingredients (except the topping ingredients) into a large bowl and beat well until completely smooth and combined.
- Pour the cheesecake mixture on top of the part-baked brownie base and bake in the oven for a further 40-50 minutes until just set in the middle.
- Once baked, turn off the oven and cool the cheesecake inside it with the door ajar until completely cool.
- When cooled, chill the cheesecake in the fridge for at least one hour.
For the topping:
- Once chilled and set, remove the block of cheesecake from the fridge and slice it into equal bars.
- Use a whisk to whip the cream to soft peaks.
- If using raspberry jam, fold this through the whipped cream.
- Pipe or dollop the whipped cream onto your cheesecake bars.
- Top the blobs of cream with some raspberries and chocolate sticks (if using).
- Enjoy!
BE A MAVERICK: why not add a shot of espresso to the vanilla cheesecake mixture for a bold flavour twist?
These Vanilla Cheesecake Brownie Bars will keep well in the fridge for up to 3 days, but are best enjoyed fresh!
