For some reason I always think brownies are the perfect thing to add stuff to. But when I try putting cheeses in brownies, it’s very touch and go.
Cream cheese is the standard add-in, but I had one massive brownie fail a while ago that involved some unwieldy mascarpone cheese. And on this go, I had a very near-fail with goat cheese!
I was using goat cheese because you guys voted for a goat cheese dish last week. I thought that it might work really nicely in a chocolate brownie with some raspberries folded in. I had dreams of these luscious dark brownies with streaks of goat cheese running through them.
It didn’t really work out like that obviously. The good news is that even though my plan completely backfired and failed, the brownies tasted really good.
I guess cooking is like poker. I’d rather be lucky than good!
Goat Cheese Brownies
Ingredients
- ½ Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, (get the good stuff)
- 1 Cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ Cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Cup fresh or frozen raspberries, if frozen, thaw in a paper towel to absorb moisture
- Pinch of salt
Goat Cheese Filling:
- 6 ounces goat cheese, (chevre)
- ½ Cup sugar
- 1 egg
Instructions
- Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat. Be careful not to burn the chocolate. When melted, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.
- For the goat cheese mixture, beat everything together until smooth.
- Once slightly cool, stir in sugar until dissolved and then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Finally, add a pinch of salt and mix in the flour.
- Stir in the raspberries and goat cheese mixture. The goat cheese mixture is optional honestly.
- Add batter to a buttered 8-inch baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes (20-25 minutes if you aren’t using the goat cheese mixture).
- Let cool for 30 minutes before cutting and serving. They should be pretty gooey. If you want them firmer, you might want to add another 5 minutes onto the baking time.
Nutrition
Did you make this recipe?
The Goat Cheese
My grand vision for this dish started with the goat cheese. I thought I’d blend together some goat cheese with some sugar and an egg to give it some body and then be able to streak that into the batter.
The problem, as you’ll see, is that this ended up being too liquidy to work. But it does taste good. So feel free to go with it. Just use a hand mixer or fork to really mix the goat cheese up well until it’s a nice smooth consistency.
The Brownie Batter
This part of the recipe I wasn’t worried about. Good chocolate brownies are pretty straightforward to make as long as you don’t overcook them!
I don’t trust brownie recipes that start with something other than chocolate and butter.
Melt these two ingredients together over low heat. Once they are melted and combined, let them cool for a minute and then stir in the sugar.
The Raspberries
Ideally, you would use fresh raspberries for this, but I couldn’t find any on this particular day so I thought I’d try out frozen. The problem with frozen raspberries is that there’s a lot of liquid that will come out when you defrost them.
I solved this problem to the best of my ability by thawing them out in the microwave on low power over some paper towels. That way the towels soak up all the liquid as they thaw.
If it looks like a murder scene, you’ve done it right!
Back to the batter
To finish off the brownie batter, beat in one egg at a time and add a pinch of salt. Then stir in the flour and your batter is ready to go!
After that, gently fold in the raspberries. Try not to over-mix it at this point or all the raspberries will just break apart.
Then pour the batter into a buttered 8-inch baking dish and you’re ready to go. Please note that you could just bake them at this point and skip all the goat cheese business.
THE FAIL
Ok. So this is where I went wrong. I thought I’d be able to pour my goat cheese mixture onto the batter and then pull a knife through the batter to form some cool streaks.
The problem of course is that this technique only works if both batters are the same consistency. Otherwise they won’t really play nice.
In my case you’ll get something like this.
If I were to toss this in the oven, I’m not sure what would happen, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. So I decided to go out on a limb and just stir the goat cheese mixture into the chocolate batter.
I grabbed an emergency fork (just a normal fork, but for emergencies) and just started whipping the two together in the baking dish. After a minute of mixing, I had something that looked pretty okay!
Baking the dish
I added a lot of moisture into my batter (which turns out to be awesome). I knew though that I would have to therefore bake this for much longer than a normal batter.
So I baked mine at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. You could go for 35-40 if you like a firmer brownie.
My came out looking surprisingly good.
I let these guys cool almost completely before chopping them up. The consistency I had was exactly what I like in brownies: gooey.
The official Macheesmo taste-tester (wife) had a bite of one of these and declared:
“Weird.”
But I must say, I thought they tasted pretty darn good. They’re definitely unique. The goat cheese has kind of a tangy flavor to it and the raspberries are really good folded in.
So, I was pretty happy with how these turned out given the near fail. Of course, if you want to try these, you can just fold the goat cheese mixture directly into the batter when you fold in the raspberries near the end or just leave out the goat cheese mixture and keep the raspberries.
If anyone has any ideas on how to accomplish what I was trying to do, leave a comment!
Victoria
I've been wanting to try to make goat-cheese swirl brownies; perhaps I should rethink that and instead include some goat cheese in the brownie batter as a substitute for some of the butter. Seems like it would add a nice tang to compliment rich chocolate.
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CGCouture
Hmmmm. These look too gooey for us, but I like the idea of adding raspberries. :-) We love regular brownies so much we've never thought about adding anything to them.
If you liked them enough to try again, maybe make two batches and split your goat cheese mixture between them? Might help them set up better.
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Nick
You could just bake them a bit longer and they'd set up more.
Karen F
Consider adding some flour to the goat cheese-egg mixture (1 Tbl at a time) to obtain a thicker texture – or even consider not using the egg with the cheese.
Nick
Yea.. that's what it needed I think.
Daktari
I admire the creativity, but goat cheese is so awesome on it's own, that it seems a shame to mask it in heavy chocolate flavor. One of my favorite uses of goat cheese is melted on toast with bruschetta. Wow. The flavor just sings.
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Nick
THat's a good point. Goat cheese is pretty darn good on its own.
ShortieK
Mmmm! I don't have the recipe handy but I've had brownies that were goat cheese swirled on top.The swirl had maybe 6oz of goat cheese, the egg, less sugar (maybe 2 Tbsp?) and a Tbsp of flour. I think the flour is probably what this version needed.
Never thought to put raspberries in brownies before- I'm definitely making these next time!
Amy Adams
I wonder if you had just baked them with the goat cheese layer on top after the failed knife swirl? The chocolate/goat cheese contrast might have been more distinct since still mostly separate layers and I'll bet the top layer would have maintained a different textural creaminess than the brownie batter.
dan
I made them once with goat cheese in the center and they came out pretty good. http://www.thefoodinmybeard.com/2010/03/two-brown…
Love the raspberry addition.
Never cook without an emergency fork thats for sure.
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thefunkykitchen
They look pretty darn tasty to me! Especially with the raspberries!
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Mandy
not brownies….but have you ever had black-bottom cupcakes? (e.g. http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/06/pot-bellies-bla… I bet you could substitute goat cheese for cream cheese, and maybe include raspberries inside, or else make a raspberry-based frosting.
Kate
I know this is an old post, but should you think of revisiting the recipe:
I would reduce the amount of sugar you add to the cheese. Sugar acts so much like a liquid in baked goods that when I am just guessing about the ratios, I find it is easy to go from fluffy to syrupy with very little room between. One commenter suggested the addition of a little flour and I agree. I would also blend some fresh lemon juice into the cheese mixture. I know the acid helps cheesecake set, and I assume that is closer to the texture you were looking for? Also, citrus goes well with both chocolate and raspberries, so it won’t skew the flavor unfavorably.
I would also suggest using fresh or even (unsweetened) dried raspberries. No matter how well you drain them, frozen berries tend to release a great deal of water because of the damage to the cell structure of the fruit as a result of freezing. Dried raspberries in particular might be especially useful because 1) they are not as finicky as frozen so there is no need to worry about them turning to mush in the mix, and 2) if they are not blended into the brownie batter, but instead put into the goat cheese mix and allowed to sit, they will partially reconstitute and absorb some moisture giving you an even thicker end product (extra bonus if they impart some of their color into the cheese, because I think light pink swirls would be lovely in dark chocolate brownies).
Nick
Great tips Kate. THanks. I think I do need to revisit this bad boy. :)