Oreo Cheesecake Brownies

Happy Sunday morning folks! It is nice and overcast in Durban and the perfect weather to do what we love doing most on a Sunday: going to Gateway to look around at "stuff", meeting friends for lunch and then heading home for Sunday afternoon baking (me) and playing playstation4/xbox (Darren). Alas, as much as we would love to be doing that, we have a full day of moving ahead of us! LAST DAY!

On Thursday evening I posted a picture of my Oreo Cheesecake Brownies and promised a recipe! So here it is!

Ingredients

+- 30 Oreo Cookies (1 1/2 boxes) more if you want to garnish with Oreo
1/3 cup of melted butter
250g cream cheese
3/4 cup of sugar
4 eggs
250ml sour cream
1tsp vanilla essence / extract
250ml cream
270g dark chocolate

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees C. Finely crush around 24 cookies - I did this by smashing the hell out of them with the end of my rolling pin in a mixing bowl. roughly chop the remaining cookies and set those aside for later. Combine the fine cookies crumbs with the melted butter in a bowl and press into a baking tray. Depending on the size of your baking tray you may need to make a little more of the base. If this is the case, just smash a few more cookies and add a little melted butter until it resembles the mixture you already have squished into your tin.

Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until it is bound and creamy then add 1 egg at a time until they are just incorporated. If you beat the eggs extensively, the surface of your cheesecake will crack. Mix in your sour cream, vanilla and coarsely chopped cookies. Pour the mixture onto your Oreo-butter base and spread to all corners. Bake for 45 minutes or until set. When ready the surface of the cheesecake should have a slight wobble - but not VERYT wobbly. As the cheesecake cools down t will set.

Allow the cheesecake to cook while you make the chocolate ganache for the top. This is really simple: Heat up your cream, take off the heat and add the chocolate pieces and mix until they are combined and make up a smoothe and creeeeeamy ganache. Set this mixture aside and make yourself a cup of tea and go on facebook or read a book or do something that distracts you from the cooling cheesecake and cooling chocolate delishiousness for about an hour. For me this was unpacking boxes and washing dishes. YAY moving!

When both the cheesecake and the chocolate ganache are cooled down, pour the ganache over the cheesecake and set in the fridge for 2-3 hours. When you take the cheesecake brownies out of the fridge the ganache should be set and ready for cutting. The best way to cut these brownies is with a hot and sharp knife. Run the knife around the edges of the baking tin and then cut into neat, cute, delicious squares. Remember to cut all the way down to the cookie base - this will be quite hard and biscuity.

I really hope you enjoy these cheesecake brownies, they are not overwhelmingly cheesey, but the 3 layers give 3 very distinct textures (thanks ma) and 3 very different tastes that make up a trio of amazingness. I am really looking forward to playing with this recipe a bit more, perhaps trying some different filled coookies like lemon creams or mint romany creams topped with a caramel? Ya. Tell me about it. Seriously though, if you try this recipe, or a variation of it, please let me know how it goes - or even better - send pics!

I hope you enjoy the recipe as well as the last day of the weekend before Monday! Make the most of it - bake, snuggle, have coffee, paint, run, walk your dogs and end it with a hot soak in the bath or something equally relaxing

Duffymoon xxx