Maple Cheesecake Brownies

Adapted from my favourite baking blog, Smitten Kitchen you should definitely check it out (but please don't forget about me I am new to all this!)

Having finally treated myself to the expensive culinary necessity that is maple syrup I decided these maple cheesecake brownies would be the perfect first thing to bake with it! The combination of the gooey chocolatey brownie with the lighter baked cheesecake makes for a perfect post tea treat - and a useful bribery tool to get your other half to do the washing up, always a bonus.

Maple Cheesecake Brownies

Ingredients

For the brownie batter:
60g butter
85g plain chocolate
1 cup sugar

2 medium eggs
2/3 cup of flour

For the cheesecake:
230g cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 medium egg yolk
1/4 cup maple syrup

Pre heat oven to 150 degrees c and line an 8" x 8" tin. Over a low heat combine butter and plain chocolate in a sauce pan and stir until melted. The mixture should have a shine to it.

Remove from heat and add eggs, sugar and flour mixing thoroughly in between each ingredient. Poor brownie batter into a 8" x 8" tin.

Next, to make the cheesecake, combine 230g of cream cheese, sugar, 1 medium egg yolk and 1/4 cup maple syrup in a mixing bowl and mix until smooth. Poor cheesecake mixture on top of the brownie batter, then take a blunt knife and swirl the two mixtures together creating a wonderful marble effect.

I had a 100g bar of plain chocolate and used the remaining 15g to add chocolate 'chunks' - which proved difficult to achieve and so more closely resembled finely grated chocolate than the desired chunks - to the top of my swirly mixture before putting in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes or until there is no giggle to the mixture.

Serve either warm or at room temperature - I find these brownies are perfect on their own so don't panic if you don't have anything you would traditionally serve brownies with - and enjoy!

I apologize for the higgledy piggledy use of US/UK cups/grams measurements, many of the blogs I follow, recipes I use etc are American and use ounces. Cups I can deal with but as I cannot visualize ounces at all I always convert these into grams! If you want to double check a converted measurement in your preferred units please feel free to leave a comment on any post!