Battle of the Brownies

     The other day, someone asked me about my new year resolutions. They were wondering whether I was going to cut out all the sugary and fatty foods that I consume. I told them, "I can't make such a resolution, it's near impossible for me to give it up. I could attempt to eat more healthily but I certainly can't cut out my desserts." 

Anyways I guess I could make a few goals, however late it is now...

1. Drink more water. It hydrates, flushes away toxins, purifies the skin.

2. Go through my stack of fitness DVDs. I paid for them I might as well just do them. Jillian Michael's toughness is a good smack in the butt sometimes.

3. Pick a future path and stick with it.

I'll make a page which will document my "GOALS" and my journey to reach them. Later. Soon. Maybe.

Random: Cool! It's Friday the 13th today!

My terrible "swirl"

     Back to the battle of the brownies. I've always preferred to eat brownies that were more fudgey. If offered a cakey brownie, I would automatically turn off my inner switch and say no. Why? Cakey brownies just seem like another version of chocolate cake. Don't you think so? Anyways I had sour cream left in the fridge that was going to go bad soon. Wait, can sour cream go past its expiration date since it'll only become more sour? What would happen to it besides liquid separation and the most obvious problem of mold? So to use the sour cream before it expired and to save it from meeting it's end in the trash, I decided to make sour cream brownies if it was possible. It was possible but it meant that the result of them would be the cakey type. Blah. I hoped that they would be better, than the previous cake brownies I've tried and proceeded with the recipe that I of course altered (this time because I didn't have dark chocolate or brown sugar).
    I decided to make a fudgey brownie as a comparasion. Maybe I've just been strerotyping brownies believing that they should only be fudgey, and maybe I've held a prejudice against them since "cakes should only be cakey" and brownies that were cakey are cakes so they taste like cake..... Oh man I'm getting confused with what I'm trying to say.

Recipes!

Sour Cream "Cakey" Brownies
Adapted from Shaunasever

1 1/2 cups AP flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (or 2 tbsp is fine too)
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter

7 ounces unsweetened chocolate (unsweetened has absolutely 0% sugar, if you use dark or semisweet chocolate adjust the sugar measurements by using a whole lot less)
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350'F. Chop up the chocolate and melt in a double boiler. Melt the butter (stovetop or microwave), mix in the sugar until the butter is cool. Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the sour cream, salt and vanilla extract. Mix in the cocoa powder and flour. Prepare a 9x13 inch pan, foil and grease. Put the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 mins, until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs. Cool completely before cutting.

Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

Basic Cheesecake:
1 egg

8oz cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
-Beat all together and set aside.

Brownie:
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter

1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder (add a couple more tbsp if you like strongly chocolate tasting brownie)
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

2/3 cup AP flour
- Melt the butter and mix everything with it until smooth. It'll be very thick

Preheat oven to 350'F. Spread the brownie layer on the bottom of a foiled and greased 9x9inch pan. Drop a few spoons of the cheesecake batter and swirl. It's going to be very hard stirring in the cheesecake layer since the brownie batter is too thick. You could make a double layered brownie by just spreading the cheesecake on top. If you decide to swirl, and have leftover cheesecake mixture you can bake it in a ramekin for crustless cheesecake.  

Bake for 20-25 mins or more depending on whether you swirl or not. Bake until the middle is set. Let it cool completely before cutting.

The cheesecake. Add some lemon zest/juice before baking!

The results:
I'm just biased towards the fudgey cheesecake brownies. This wasn't a fair battle. I thought that the sour cream brownies were a tad bit on the dry side (maybe I'll add some apple sauce to them next time), but H. seemed to enjoy them a lot... though she doesn't enjoy the chocolate fudgey-ness of any kind of desserts.
Back to my fudey brownie, I think a double layered cheesecake brownie would be a fantastic idea. I'm totally doing that in the future. Then I also get to wash one less dish.
Oh, I almost forgot! J. enjoyed how the brownies weren't overly sweet... uh oh... I don't know which ones she was talking about....