Brownies Twice Over

I'm way behind on my posts, and in the last few weeks, I've made a couple types of brownies: Mint Brownies and Cream Cheese Brownies. So lots of chocolate :D

Mint Brownies
Yield: 8x8 pan of brownies
Adapted from Gale Gand

Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup white whole wheat flour
dash of salt
1 cup mint chocolate chunks (I used chopped up Trader Joes's UFOs)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a double boiler over very low heat. Stir together and remove from the heat. Add sugar and eggs. Mix well. Stir in the flour and salt. Add chocolate chunks. Spread the mixture into a buttered 8-inch square pan. Bake until set, about 40 minutes. When cold, the chunks of chocolate got too solidified, so they taste best served warm with vanilla ice cream :)




Cream Cheese Brownies
Yield: 8x8 pan of brownies
Adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients
Brownie Layer:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
dash of salt

Cream Cheese Layer:
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp granulated white sugar
1 egg white

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and place the rack in the center of the oven. Line an 8x8 pan with aluminum foil (bottom and sides).

Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well with a wooden spoon after each addition. Stir in the flour and salt and beat, with a wooden spoon, until the batter is smooth and glossy and comes away from the sides of the pan (about one minute). Remove ~1/2 cup of the brownie batter and set aside. Place the remainder of the brownie batter evenly into the prepared pan.

With a hand mixer, blend the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and egg white and process until creamy and smooth. Spread the cream cheese filling over the brownie layer. Spoon small dollops of the reserved brownie batter evenly on top of the cream cheese filling. Then with a table knife or wooden skewer, swirl the two batters without mixing them.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes or until the brownies start to pull away from the sides of the pan and the edges of the brownies are just beginning to brown. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. If you can wait, refrigerate the brownies until they are firm enough to cut into squares (at least two hours). These brownies can be stored in the refrigerator for several days. These brownies turned out a bit too sweet (I reduced the amt of sugar in the original recipe by 40% but I should have reduced it even further). Also, the original recipe called for twice as much cream cheese mixture, but I didn't have that much cream cheese, so I had to halve that. But it would have tasted much better with more cream cheese :)