This year, the husband and I have already had our going out dinner (the Boro), and we've also done our staying in dinner (clams & steak). So, for this year, I decided to make a special dessert. I know that chocolate with cherries is one of my husband's favorite desserts. I also know that he loves cheesecake. So, I decided to make cherry cheesecake brownie cupcakes.
This dessert involves three components that you can use together or separately in pretty much any combination you like. I will give you the separates and then tell you how to incorporate them into the final product.
Cherry Sauce
Ingredients:
1 12 oz. bag frozen cherriesDirections:
1/2 cup raw sugar
2 tbsp corn starch
Take your frozen cherries, cut them in halves, and place them in a small frying pan on medium heat. Allow the cherries to warm up so that they will thaw and release their juices.
When the juices start to slightly bubble, add your sugar and stir, allowing the sugar to melt into your cherry juice.
Once the sugar has thoroughly melted and you have a cherry syrup, you want to sprinkle your corn starch in, stirring continuously. As your corn starch mixes in your syrup will begin to thicken up.
You can add additional corn starch if you like a thicker cherry filling. I like to use mine more like a sauce, so I keep it like a light gravy consistency.
Brownie Batter
Ingredients:
1 box Betty Crocker Gluten Free Brownie Mix**Yes, I know I cheated and used a box brownie mix on a "from scratch" blog, but every other item on here is made from scratch and I had the box, so that is what I used. Don't hold it against me.
2 eggs
1/4 cup of melted butter
1 cup chopped pecans
Directions:
Take your dry mix and pour it into a mixing bowl. Take your two eggs and whisk them in a separate bowl. Once the yolks and whites are blended, pour the mixture over the dry mix. Melt your butter and pour the liquid butter over the dry mix.
Using a spoon (because I found out the hard way, a whisk is not strong enough to handle brownie batter), mix your ingredients together. They will form the equivalent of brownie cement.
Mix your chopped pecans in with the batter, thoroughly stirring until your pecans are blended in. Keep in mind that this particular batter mix has chocolate chunks, so you will experience a very chunky batter.
Cheese Cake Batter
Ingredients:
8oz package of cream cheeseDirections:
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup of raw sugar
Use a metal mixing bowl and set up a double boiler to keep your metal mixing bowl warm. This will ensure that your cream cheese will stay loose and not seize up. Let your cream cheese sit until it starts to melt and get very soft.
In a separate bowl, whisk your egg so that the yolk and white mix together. Using your whisk, mix the egg and cream cheese together. Keep it over the double boiler to keep it nice and soft and creamy.
Add in your vanilla and sugar and continue to whisk over the double boiler so that the sugar will melt and blend into the cream cheese and egg mixture.
You will need to keep whisking and continue to use the double boiler while spooning your cheese cake batter into the baking liners, so when you're ready, just keep in mind that you want this liquidy.
Cherry Cheesecake Brownie Cupcakes
Ingredients:
Brownie BatterDirections:
Cheese Cake Batter
Cherry Sauce
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
I put silver cupcake liners in my cupcake pan, rather than grease the pan, but you can simply grease yours if you'd like.
Fill up each liner about halfway with brownie mix. You may need to press it down into the liner. I also had to tap my cupcake pan on the counter to level the batter. After I had each liner halfway filled, I set the pan aside for about twenty minutes while I prepared my cherry filling and my cheese cake batter. This allowed the batter to settle.
Next, spoon your cheese cake batter into each liner on top of the brownie batter. Make sure you leave a little room at the top for your cherry sauce.
Spoon some of the cherries and filling in the middle of your cheese cake batter.
Cook your cupcakes for 60 minutes, keeping the temperature at 325 degrees. When they're done, pull them out and let them sit and cool before trying to remove them from the pan.
When they were cooled, I pulled them, liners intact, and plated them on a cake plate.
For the one I'm eating now, I removed the silver liner and added some of the extra cherry filling over the top. I can't wait to dig in!
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