German Cheesecake Brownie Bars

While I would never go so far as to devoting a whole blog to a single type of pastry, I have found some pretty cool ones out there devoted solely to brownies. Over the past couple of years, brownies have made their way to Germany as well, and they are now found as a regular item in bakeries and on cookie trays.

One of my specialties is cheesecake, and I was hunting down a way to pair it with brownie somehow when I stumbled upon a few recipes for German cheesecake with brownie bottom on chefkoch.de. None of them were quite what I wanted, so I combined the best ideas and a cheesecake recipe of my own and created German cheesecake brownie bars.

You could easily make this in a brownie pan and cut them, but for some reason I think they look prettier baked individually. :) Another one of those international “cross-over recipes” that I love. Enjoy!

PS. These are best eaten warm or warmed up. Just sayin'. :)

German Cheesecake Brownie Bars

(Original Recipe.)

For the brownie bottom:
125 g dark chocolate, melted
125 g butter, soft
2 eggs
215 g powdered sugar, sifted
80 g milk
160 g flour, sifted
35 g sugar

Heat up water until it boils and pour over the chocolate chunks. Let stand for a moment to give the chocolate a chance to melt. Drain as much of the water as you can, stir in the butter. Beat the sugar, powdered sugar and eggs until creamy, add the milk, chocolate mixture and flour, stir just enough until combined.

TIP/NOTE: This way of melting chocolate is a shortcut that will only work if you are using the chocolate IN a cake, not if you should have tempered it for topping.

For the cheesecake top:
375 g ricotta or quark
150 g sugar
2 eggs
35 g butter, soft
25 g flour, sifted
10 g corn starch, sifted
10 g vanilla flavor
10 g lemon flavor

Beat the sugar and eggs until fluffy, add the ricotta, flavors and butter. Keep beating until the batter starts to look creamy. Add the flour and starch, continue beating for another minute or two. The mixture should look creamy, if a little on the liquid side. This is normal, it will solidify later.

TIP/NOTE: RESIST the temptation to add more flour to the cheesecake mixture. It will appear too liquid, but solidify later. If you add more flour, it will become too dense.

Preheat the oven to 300 F (150 C). Either first spread the brownie batter on the bottom of a 13 x 9 inch pan, then top with the cheesecake, OR scoop the brownie batter evenly into the cavities of a square bar pan (12 square bars), then top with the cheesecake batter.

Bake for about 45 – 60 minutes or until the tops appear puffy and browned at the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center of one bar comes out clean.

Makes 12 bars.

[Printable Recipe]