Chocolate Stained Kitchen: Brownie

Today is National Cream Cheese Brownie day. And to celebrate, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese brownies. The brownie recipe was adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie’s Fudge Daddie’s recipe and the cream cheese recipe was adapted from Dollhouse Bake Shoppe’s Cheesecake Swirl recipe. A few modifications were made to both recipes. For the brownies itself, I used TJ's unsweetened vanilla soy milk and TJ's pure bourbon vanilla extract instead of pure vanilla extract. (I didn't have any pure vanilla extract on hand but figured this would work. That and I've been looking for an excuse to try it out ).

Once I completed the brownie batter, I got working on the cream cheese. For the cheesecake swirl, I used TJ's low fat cream cheese instead of normal, full fat cream cheese and splenda instead of pure white sugar cane. I've never made this before so I don't know if I did something wrong. But my cheesecake swirl came out kind of runny. Maybe it's because of my subsititutions? In any case, I didn't have anymore creame cheese in the house and I wasn't about to make a supermarket run mid-way, so there was no turning back.
I greased my pan, poured in half of the brownie batter and the cream cheese mixture on top of that. Then spooned the remaining brownie batter over the cream cheese and used a knife to create a swirl-like pattern
In Katie's recipe, she provides a baking time of 12-18 minutes; however she suggests reducing the time to 8-10 min for a more gooey/fudgy texture, which I am a huge fan of. I had originally set my timer for 10 min but it was still a bit too jiggly in the middle (probably due to the addition of the cheesecake swirl). So, I left it in the oven for an additional 5 min.
While that was happily baking in the oven, decided to treat myself to a bottle of Boatswain Chocolate Stout that I had recently purchased from TJ's. I have never had chocolate beer before, so I made sure to sample it first.

This beer was really good. It's dark and thick like Guinness, but it's also malt-y, hopp-y, chewy, and most importantly, has just the right amount of chocolate flavor.

But, I decided to pour myself another ~~small~~ glass just to be sure =)

By the time I finished my beer, my cream cheese brownies were done. I really wanted to conduct a taste test right away, but m,y belly was full from the beer. And I wanted to wait until the official Cream Cheese Brownie day.

This morning, I did a pre-celebration workout at the gym (4 mile run + kickboxing), and then celebrated with a giant bowl of cream cheese brownie overnight oats.