Mint Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Brownies- Gianna and Erika

Reflection/How it went? :
For our final project, Gianna and I made Mint Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Brownies. They were quite simple to make but the first couple times we tried they did not turn out as planned. The first part of the recipe was the mint cheesecake. The key to a good cheesecake is not over beating the batter. You cannot have too much air in the batter because air will cause the cake to swell in the middle while it is in the oven and then deflate while it is cooling, which leaves a depression in the cake. The first few times we made the mint cheesecake, we got swells after they were cooked because we still had air bubbles in our mixture. So, for our final try we decided to try to put the mixture in the fridge for a little bit so that the air bubbles would deflate as much as possible.

The second part of the recipe was the brownie mix. In chocolate there is a chemical called anandamide ("bliss") and it is a functional group. Anandamide makes people when happy when they eat it. It is also in our body produced by the brain, which helps decrease the amount of pain and depression in someone's mind. In the brain, the anandamide breaks down quickly, so the effect does not last as long, but within the chocolate they have other substances within that help deny the break down of the anandamide. The molecules stay within the body longer. Just like with the cheesecake mix, we had alot of air bubbles in the brownie mix so we put it in the fridge as well to help deflate the bubbles.

The last part of our cheesecake brownies was the homemade whipped cream we made. Cream has a high fat content, which can be whipped. When you whip the cream it creates air bubbles and the cream then becomes light and frothy. If you were to say, stop whisking, the bubbles would come out and the cream would become liquid again. The magic of whip cream is that it turns from a liquid to a solid. That's where whisking comes into play. The more you whisk, the bubbles are being whisked into the liquid and it starts to strip away the fat. This allows the fat to join with and create protective bubbles around the air pockets. This process is called emulsion, which is "air suspended in liquid held stable by fat". This is the reason why you need cream with a high fat content to create whipped cream.

Overall, our brownies turned out very well in the end after we fixed the air bubble issue. They rose the perfect amount and we basically half brownie and half cheesecake. The kindergartner's loved them!

Recipe :

Cheesecake-
1. 8 ounces of cream cheese
2.1/4 cup of sugar
3. 1 egg
4. 1/2 teaspoon of mint extract
5. 4 drops green food coloring
6. 1 cup mini chocolate chips

Brownie mix-
1.1/2 cup of flour
2. 1 cup sugar
3.1/3 cup dark cocoa powder
4.1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
5.1/2 cup butter melted
6. 2 eggs

Whipped Cream-
1.1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
2. 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar
3. 1 cup of heaving whipping cream

Preparation :
1.Preheat oven to 350F/180C
2.For the cheesecake, in a bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth
3.Add sugar, egg, mint extract, and food coloring, and beat until smooth
4. Fold in the chocolate chips --> set aside in fridge
5.For the brownie, in a separate bowl, whisk the dry ingredients until combined
6.Add the butter and eggs and beat until smooth
7.To assemble, fill each cup of standard, lined muffin tin half full of brownie, then half full of cheesecake mixture
8. Bake 16-23 minutes
9. Enjoy!