Nabeeha's Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

I have an instant distrust of people who refuse to share their recipes. I won't lie to you. I can't make any sense of it, you see. It's the year 2014, and, to my mind, any combination of ingredients that I can think of has already been thought of at least once before - unless I think of something absolutely disgusting which really isn't the point here. What I'm saying is, I don't think anyone can claim too many 'secret' or 'unique' recipes any more. So why should I care if xyz will make the same cake as I do? It doesn't affect me at all. It's more fun to be their source for the recipe anyway because then people say nice things about you and I love it when people say nice things about me. I'm easy that way. I enjoy learning new recipes from people I meet. The recipes I share here have been collected from my family, friends, acquaintances, books and blogs. And those people got them from some other people. Who knows how long back it goes, and isn't it fun to think that recipes too are a kind of legacy?

Now I've forgotten what my original train of thought was, but here's an amazing recipe for this fantabulous and crazily fattening dessert which is a mixture of red-velvet cake, cheesecake and brownies. This recipe came to me from my lovely friend, fellow Fulbrighter and senior here at Babson College, Nabeeha Qazi. We made this on valentine's day and it was the best decision ever. I had 1.5 cupcake sized brownies (because we made them in cupcake tins) and then had one for breakfast the next morning. We gave the rest away because we don't want to get too fat okay?

Here's what you need:

• 1 stick or 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder 
• A pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon red food coloring
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 8 ounces or 200 grams cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

And here's how you do this:

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Melt the butter in a medium sized bowl (we did it in the microwave). Throw in the sugar and mix well, preferably with an electric beater. Add the vanilla, coco powder, salt, food colouring and vinegar and just keep mixing it all together.

Beat the two eggs separately and add the flour to them. Then just mix the red mixture with the egg mixture and voila, your red-velvet brownie part of this thing is done! This will be very very thick, and I kept asking Nabeeha if this was right. Just seemed weird to me, not batter-like at all. And the craziest part was NO baking powder!! How do you make a cake without BP or soda? I was skeptical, I won't lie. But these were awesome so there you have it!

For the cheesecake portion, in a clean bowl, beat the cream cheese using an electric beater (wash the red stuff off it before using it for this!). Add the sugar, the egg and the vanilla, and beat well. And done.

Now there's two ways you could do this. Either use a square or round cake tin, or use a muffin/cupcake pan like we did.

Here's a tip for any cake you make: When ever possible, use a springform pan. When I was first learning to bake, you can't imagine how many times I broke my heart when I broke the cake trying to turn it out of the cake tin. Springform pans are the best thing ever. Also, with most cakes, it's smart to line the base with paper, then grease the base and sides. Also, sprinkle flour, or coco powder if it's a chocolate cake. I hate hate hate cutting out circles to line the base. It's such a stupid step, but so necessary most of the time.

Back to the recipe at hand. What we did was just grease the muffin tin (it was a great quality non-stick tin) with oil, then add about a tablespoon of the red mixture to each tin. Top this with the cheese mixture. Finally, add a smidgen of the red mixture to each tin, and swirl with a pointy knife or skewer or something. I tried to make hearts. I love hearts. It didn't really work out but still.

If making a cake, grease and line the cake tin, add the red mixture, top with the cheese mixture, and swirl. An 8 by 8 inches pan should be the right size.

Put it in the oven, and let it bake! It's done when it seems to pull away from the edges and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for a good twenty minutes, then loosen the edges before trying to turn the brownies out. 

p.s. That one white cheesecake you see in the collage is because we had mixture left over so we put a little bit of the red mixture and topped it with a thicker layer of the remaining cheesecake mixture. It was delicious.