Cream Cheese Brownies

Baking treats is something I absolutely love to do, and it’s so relaxing and therapeutic for me. The only thing that makes it better is when I get to bake something to give away to someone else. I don’t know about you, but I just love cooking or baking for other people. Taking the time to make something to give away shows how much you care for them, and I’ll never get tired of seeing the huge smile on people’s face when they see that someone made them food. When my Mom asked me to bake something for her co-worker, I happily agreed and immediately got started thinking about what I wanted to make. I had a few tubs of Melanie’s Medleys cream cheeses in my fridge, so I decided I wanted to incorporate those into my dessert somehow. Since the dessert was going to sit out on a counter for a few hours, I didn’t want to make a cheesecake or something else that might go bad, so I decided on some cream cheese brownies.

When I was living in Charleston, South Carolina, I tested out a recipe for cream cheese brownies, and when I shared the brownies with others, everyone loved them and asked me for the recipe. People liked them so much that I ended up making these to give away to people about once every other week or so. They were definitely a crowd-pleaser!

Since everyone seemed to enjoy these brownies so much, I tucked the recipe away into my handy dandy binder of favorite recipes so that I would never forget it.

The other day when I was deciding on what to make for my mom to take with her to work, I decided that instead of coming up with a new recipe for cream cheese brownies, I was just going to use the one I had already made in the past. After all, it’s was a tried-and-true recipe, so I knew I couldn’t go wrong with it!

Whenever I made this recipe in the past, I always used plain cream cheese, but this time, I decided I wanted to switch it up. Well actually, I didn’t really have any other option. I had a fridge full of cream cheese containers, yet none of them were just plain cream cheese. Melanie’s Medleys has so many fun different flavors they offer, so I always like to get the fun flavors as opposed to the plain cream cheese that I can find in any grocery store.

When I looked into my fridge, it took me a few minutes to figure out which flavor I wanted to use for these brownies, and in the end, I decided to go with the Honey Pecan flavor. I thought that it would add just the perfect amount of sweetness while also adding a bit of crunch from the pieces of pecans.

After my decision was made, I got to work making this recipe (which is incredibly quick and easy, by the way). Since I knew I was making these to serve for other people, I wanted to pre-cut them into slices and place them in a container. That way, people could quickly grab a brownie instead of having to take the time to cut a piece for themselves. Therefore, I decided to cover the pan with a layer of aluminum foil and then spray it with non-stick cooking spray. That way, I could easily remove them from the tray and cut them into bars that I could place into the container.

After that, I stuck the tray in the oven, waited patiently (okay, not really)for the brownies to bake, and then removed them from the oven. I let them cool for about 15 or so minutes, and then all I had to do was lift the foil out of the pan, slide the brownie onto the cutting board, and slice it up!

It honestly doesn’t get much simpler than that, does it? Plus, as another added bonus, lining the pan with foil makes doing dishes a lot easier!

In the past when I have made these, there has been a very noticeable layer of cream cheese in the middle, however that wasn’t the case with the brownies this time when I made them. Or maybe it did still make a layer, but it was just harder to see because the Honey Pecan cream cheese I used was more brown in color, as opposed to the bright white color that plain cream cheese has.

Not long into cutting into the brownies, I noticed that there was in fact a layer of cream cheese in the middle – just not as dominant as the layer made when using plain cream cheese.

And can we just take a moment to stop and appreciate how thick these brownies are? Oh my goodness, they were so incredibly thick that I had to stretch my fingers so far just to hold two of them stacked on top of each other! Not that I’m campaigning, though, because I love sinking my teeth into a thick and chewy brownie.

After drooling over these brownies and wishing they could stay in my house for me to eat, I had to pack them up and deliver them to my mom’s office for her co-workers to enjoy.

But before I did that, I had to slice a few small pieces to save for my parents and I to test for ourselves. After all, what kind of baker would I be if I just baked for other people and didn’t try it out first? They could taste terrible for all I knew, and I wouldn’t want to serve people terrible brownies, now would I? Luckily, these brownies passed the taste test with flying colors and tasted just as great as I remember them tasting in the past. And now that I was reminded by how good they were, I think I’m just going to have to whip up another batch with a different Melanie’s Medleys flavor and save them for myself and my parents 🙂