Welcome to another weekly posting of my Friday treat!  This week’s treat was requested by our team leader at work, Kristina, and was inspired by the cheesecake brownie recipes I have been frequently stumbling on this entire week.  An unrelated side note: as I type this post, I am listening to the blaring sounds of my mom’s new iPad.  It is currently being controlled by my 16-year-old brother, and he is showing me some neato 2009 megamix thing as well as commenting on Miley Cyrus’ midriff in her new album cover.  Oh weekend trips home.

I have never made brownies before, so you can probably imagine how worried I was when this recipe called on me to make them FROM SCRATCH.  Walking around the grocery store collecting my ingredients, I paused for an extended period of time in front of the “brownie-in-a-box” Duncan Hines mix.  Wouldn’t it be nice to just add three ingredients and magically have a delicious brownie batter?  Alas, I refused to give in, and promptly snatched up bars of semi-sweet chocolate and unsweetened cocoa powder.  That’s what I get for stubbornly refusing to make boxed food.

Anyways, since I couldn’t find a cheesecake brownie recipe on Canadian Living, I turned to dear Martha Stewart for this recipe.  Technically these are called “cream-cheese brownies,” but when you add the word “cheesecake” to a recipe, it always becomes more fun, right?  Since I don’t have a double-boiler (and didn’t fully know what one was until I googled it late Thursday night), I just heated the chocolate and butter right over my stove element, cautiously aware of the fact that I had burned an entire chocolate bunny in a similar manner just years earlier.  IT WAS PERFECT.  Once I mixed the batter together, it was like magic.  It was delicious and rich and smooth, and so much better than I could ever imagine the consistency of a brownie batter to be.  I came face-to-face with the Dessert Gods, and I loved it.

The recipe told me to bake the brownies for 50 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees.  Obviously in our oven, this translated to 30 minutes at 300 degrees.  Oven temperature…I have conquered you.

The picture can really not do these brownies justice.  I’m usually pretty humble with my cooking skills, but these were perfection.

PS: I have been CHALLENGED by my friend Gord to a cook a meal using tofu (my mortal enemy).  I have hesitantly accepted, and will be making something tofu-fied sometime in the next week.  Watch out world.