Mocha Brownies

I am so nervous about the yearlies, but I'm too lazy to revise. I probably will have to cram in the last few days. Oh well, never been the conscientious type anyway.

Brownies! These mocha (coffee)-flavoured brownies were tasty, but only to those who enjoy coffee. I myself am a tea person so these weren't that exciting. People who love coffee though would love these.

I don't know why but I burnt the bottom of the brownies. Maybe my oven's weird? I don't know. I also added some chopped walnuts for texture.

Bye! (I have to think of a better way to end my posts)

White Chocolate and Cherry Brownies

I have a love-hate relationship with white chocolate. I refer to it as fake white crap as in it's not real chocolate, containing no cocoa mass. But occasionally I crave it because dark chocolate is too rich and milk chocolate is too sweet (ironic?). I can eat a small piece of white chocolate, and every piece after that causes toothache. I had to make these blondies though because I love cherries and I was craving white chocolate.

This recipe is called 'Cherry Blondies', but blondies are made with brown sugar and no chocolate. I'd rather call them more accurately, white chocolate brownies. I used a drained jar of Morello cherries instead of fresh cherries, which added sourness against the sweet of the chocolate.

These white chocolate brownies were really nice. Chewy and sweet, without a strong tooth-aching white chocolate taste. The cherries were juicy and paired well with the brownie. They were so easy to make and I plan on making them for a few friends in the future.

Cream Cheese Brownies

It's not often that I make something I have before. If I did, it was probably because it was so immensely delicious. This time, I revisited the marbled brownie because I accidentally bought a block of cream cheese. I wasn't exactly happy with my previous low-fat one, so I decided to look for the real deal.

This version tastes so much better than the other one. I don't have a brownie preference, fudgey or cakey all works for me. The middle of these brownies are chewey and the top layer of cream cheese contrasts the dark chocolateness.

Both times I've had trouble swirling the mixture, resulting in an ugly pattern. I blame a really thick brownie batter, though I don't understand why. I suggest dropping spoonfuls of the brownie and cream cheese batter separately, to produce a more defined pattern.

If I ever make brownies, I will head immediately to this recipe. I also bought a new cookbook yesterday, so I want to make something out of that.

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Marbled Cheesecake Brownies

As you know, I live in Australia and, according to studies like this, this country has the most number of overweight and obese adults in the world. Of course, with overweight adults come overweight children and teens. Although I love eating the occasional butter-rich cake and sugar-filled(stuffed) dougnut, there comes a time when you have to go down the low-fat alleyway. But being low-fat or low-calorie doesn't mean food has to taste crap, so I went on the hunt for delicious low-calorie desserts.

At that time, I was also browsing around the Kraft website and my eyes fell instantly on their marbled brownies, but they asked for a brownie mix and did not have a nutritional table. So I set off to find a low calorie marbled brownie recipe and found multiple results, but the one I settled on was a recipe from the recipe section of Health.com. Each serving claimed to have only 140 calories, which was encouraging.

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The brownie mixture was unbelievably thick. It took alot of effort to coax it to the sides of the pan and smooth it out evenly. This was also the reason why the cheesecake mixure did not marble enough with the brownie - it was just too thick. The taste was good, with the brownie dense and the coffee added to the richness. I think I will be experimenting with other non-low-fat recipes to compare it with.

Of course, replacing one dessert with a slightly healthier alternative is simply not enough to turn someone's life around. You need an all round healthy diet, as well as regular exercise. Still, if you are health-conscious, you should seriously try this recipe.

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Recipe obtained from here.