Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

I feel like today is my last chance to post about Valentine's day.  I saw these brownies on Tracey's blog and had to try them.  The only thing about it is-I should have called them not-so-red velvet.  I skimped on the food coloring.  What can I say?  It gets a bad name, red.  Everyone hates it these days and I felt guilty dumping it into my brownies.  (They were so healthy otherwise)  I actually thought I had them pretty infused, but the proof is in the...uh.. brown.
So I have a photo of what mine looked like before adding the chocolate.  If yours is intensified, it should look more RED.  Red or not, these are good.  They aren't super-rich, like my favorite brownie recipe is.  Sometimes it's okay to eat something that's not super-rich though, right?  I tried to cut them into hearts, but it wasn't working out well.  They cut pretty well into squares after refrigerating overnight.  If you wipe your knife between each cut, that helps too.  Check out the photos on Baking Bites to see how the red should look. :)

Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

Adapted slightly from: Baking Bites

Brownies

1 cup butter

4 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 T red food coloring

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

Cheesecake

2-8oz pkg cream cheese, softened

2/3 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.  Line a 13x9 pan with foil, leaving extra on 2 ends to lift the brownies out.  Spray or grease the foil.  To make the brownies:  Melt butter in microwave safe bowl, add chocolate chips and set aside.  

Whisk sugar, eggs, vanilla, and food coloring in a separate bowl.  I thought this would be red enough...I was wrong!  I didn't measure though, just added some.  Maybe if I followed directions it would have been enough!

Once the chocolate in the butter is softened, whisk butter and chocolate together until smooth.  If chocolate still isn't smooth, microwave at 30 second intervals until it whisks smooth.  Add to egg and sugar mixture and combine.  Stir in flour and salt until just combined

Cheesecake layer:  With a mixer, beat the cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla until smooth

Spread brownie batter into prepared pan.  Drop dollops of cheesecake mixture on top 

and swirl with a butter knife.  

Bake 35-45 minutes, until and knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.  Cool to room temperature and then transfer to fridge to cool completely.  

Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

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