Published January 1, 1999.
We discovered the secrets to creating the perfect cream cheese brownie recipe: We started with our best brownie recipe and, for added height, increased it by half, using all-purpose flour instead of cake flour (for a more solid structure) and a combination of bittersweet or semisweet chocolate and unsweetened chocolate (for more intense chocolate flavor and a softer texture). The cream cheese filling tasted best with just an egg yolk, sugar, and vanilla added to the cream cheese. And we pulled our cream cheese brownies from the oven when some crumbs stuck to a cake tester—if the tester was clean we knew we had let the brownies bake too long.
Knowing when to remove a pan of brownies from the oven is the only difficult part about baking them. If you wait until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, the brownies are overcooked. But if a toothpick inserted in the middle of the pan comes out with fudgy crumbs, remove the pan immediately. If you are a nut lover, you can stir 1 cup toasted walnuts or pecans into the brownie batter. To melt the chocolate and butter in a microwave oven, microwave chocolate alone at 50 percent power for 2 minutes. Stir chocolate; add butter; and continue microwaving at 50 percent for another 2 minutes, stopping to stir the mixture after 1 minute. If chocolate is not entirely melted, microwave an additional 30 seconds at 50 percent power.
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