Red Velvet & Cream Cheese Brownies

This week has been very hectic, and so I actually haven't been able to bake at all.
When I say at all, I mean I only managed to make brownies.

Monday was my standard routine of going to Tiger Tiger, quite possibly the perviest club in London. Except this time we celebrated Ariella's belated birthday/leaving to Israel, which was important because it meant free shots from her hot parents.

It was as pervy as ever, so when Nicole Scherzinger's foul song 'Right There' came on and the slag sung 'come on baby put your hands on my body' this creep that looked like one of the Desperate Housewives murderers started feeling me up. I explained to him that the song wasn't to be taken literally. He moved on to the girl next to me. Classy lad.

The rest of the week was filled up by seeing my boyfriend, Tyson Beckford, before he goes off to Thailand or wherever he said he was going. I assume Thailand because that's where all my sister's boyfriends go when they inevitably leave/turn gay.

This seems to be a pattern in our family as I spent the other night listening to my ex talk about his break up with Jesse. (Don't be optimistic and think 'Jessie the Cowgirl'...not quite...more Jesse the guy dressed up like a red indian for the Village People party they attended recently)

You thought I was joking. Either way we hate Jesse. He's a liar.

So since then we've had results day, which has been stressful as shit. I magically got all A's in English and Classics which I keep having to double check, while art literally fucked me.
To be fair I have my teacher Valerie to thank, even though she laughs at me every single lesson when I say something retarded she is a pretty great teacher.
Unlike our other teacher who doesn't need to be named who spent an entire lesson with us gossiping about plastic surgery while eating a sandwich...
The day was emotional but made me really proud of lots of my friends, especially Essie Buckman, Shier Ziser, Ariella Wagerman, , Matt Kuber, Nechama Harris, Toni Enright, and Natalie Barber - all fucking geniuses.
Probably a lot more too, my favourite is because they're way too down to earth for anyone to know they're so clever. Matt not so much.

It was a very nice day, and my parents got out the gin and tonic to celebrate. Although I'm pretty sure it wasn't in honour of me...because it was 6pm and therefore officially happy hour anyway.

SO BACK TO TODAY.
I'm going to Tel Aviv tomorrow FINALLY.
I've been in London so long that they tried to set it on fire to make me leave.
Its all very exciting because I'm going to stay with Shier and her two brothers Lamar and Simba.
I've also been super duper cool enough to download the BA app to track my boarding pass. Ultimate neb.

I need to pack and I totally can't be fucked. If it wasn't for going away tomorrow I would probably be high and baking a cake while listening to Otis Redding. Basically an ideal morning.
Instead, I'm sitting around waiting for my ridiculously excessive Boots order to arrive with all my holiday non-essentials.
In the mean time, I'll share with you the brownies I made mid-week. They're amazing.



Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2-oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tsp red food coloring
• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 8-oz cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 8 inch metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up two sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends. (This will make it easy to remove the bars from the pan after they have baked.) Butter the parchment.

In a small, heatproof bowl, melt butter and chocolate together. Stir until combined and very smooth. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and red food coloring. Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Add flour and salt and stir until just combined and no streaks of dry ingredients remain. 

 

Pour into prepared pan and spread into an even layer. To prepare cheesecake mixture, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in a medium bowl until smooth. Distribute the cheesecake mixture in 8 dollops over batter in the pan.

Swirl in with a knife or spatula.Bake for 35-40 minutes, until brownies and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cheesecake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned.

Let cool completely in pan on a cooling rack before lifting out the parchment paper to remove the brownies.