Red Velvet Cheesecake Bars

A guest post from my fellow baker friend and roommate, Katie Bill!

Happy Valentines Day! I figured what better time of year to totally indulge in chocolate, and better yet, a red velvet recipe!  With the deep red of the cake and creamy white cheesecake topping it seemed like the perfect, festive dessert to make for my friends and family.  The recipe sounded super easy and contained pretty basic ingredients, so I decided to give it a whirl! (pun intended, see below…)

They turned out great, but were slightly less sweet than I had expected them to be.  Next time I might try adding more sugar to the cheesecake layer, because the cream cheese was just a little overpowering.  Another recipe that I read instructed to add 1 cup rather than 2/3 cup, so if you have a sweet tooth as big as mine, going with the full cup might be a good idea.  Also, I baked them for closer to 40 minutes than 35, because after 35 the cheesecake hadn’t quite set.  Below is the exact recipe that I used.

Ingredients:

For Cake Layer

·      1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

·      4oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

·      2 cups granulated sugar

·      4 large eggs

·      2 tsp vanilla extract

·      1 tbsp red food coloring

·      1 1/3 cups all purpose flour

·      ½ tsp salt

For Cheesecake Layer

·      2 8oz blocks of cream cheese, room temperature

·      2/3 cups granulated sugar

·      2 large eggs

·      1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1.    Preheat oven to 350 F

2.    Line a 9 x 13 in baking pan with aluminum foil and lightly grease.

3.    Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat.  Stir until combined and very smooth.  Afterwards, set aside to cool for a few minutes.

4.     In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and food coloring (for cake layer).

5.    Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth.

6.    In a separate bowl, sift together flour and salt.  Once combined, add dry ingredients into batter and stir until no streaks remain.

7.    Pour cake batter into pan and spread into an even layer.

8.    To prepare cheesecake mix, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract until smooth.

9.    Drop dollops of cheesecake batter onto prepared cake batter.  Gently swirl two batters with a knife, as pictured below.

 

10. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until bar and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned.

11. Cool in the pan before slicing and serving, either at room temperature or chilled. Enjoy!!  

Girl Scout Samoas Cookies

Who hasn't had a Samoa girl scout cookie before? It's pretty hard to resist eating an entire package of these chewy, coconutty, chocolatey cookies. We don't really have any girl scouts come by our door selling thin mints and tagalongs and samoas, so I decided to just make my own. I've been seeing recipes for homemade samoas on foodgawker for months now, and I've finally managed to make them! I decided to make them in a heart shape for February, because we all know if it's possible to make something holiday themed in the slightest, I will make it will happen. Be forewarned, however, that this recipe is sort of a difficult, sticky process.... but worth it of course!!

There are a few main steps that go into making the samoas: 1) the shortbread cookie bottom,  2) toasting coconut, 2) topping the shortbread with the caramel coconut layer, 3) dipping in chocolate, 4) the chocolate drizzle. Let's get started! 

Ingredients:

Shortbread Cookie Layer

•  1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• up to 1 Tbsp milk (optional)

Coconut Caramel Layer 

• 3 cups shredded coconut (I used sweetened, unsweetened is fine)
• 1 bag chewy caramels (12-14oz usually) 
• 3 Tbsp whole milk (any milk will do, or heavy cream - I used vanilla almond milk)
• 1/2 tsp salt

Chocolate 

•  1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (I recommend getting the larger size bag)

Instructions: 

Shortbread Cookie Layer

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt so it's thoroughly mixed.
4. Add the vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture and slowly beat in the flour mixture.
5. Add up to 1 Tbsp. milk if needed (I definitely needed to add the extra milk, and might have added a little more than 1 Tbsp. to get to a good rolling consistency, so don't be shy!)
6. Roll out the dough to 1/4" and cut out with whatever cookie cutter you want. To get the real Samoa shape, you can used a pineapple corer to get the cookie with the hole in the middle!
7. Place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. You want this cookie to be crunchy, so let it fully cook! My cookies ended up being a little thick, so it took about 13 minutes.
8. After baking, set aside to cool and start working on your coconut caramel layer.

Coconut Caramel Layer

1. Spread 3 cups of whatever shredded coconut you have onto a 11 x 17" jelly roll pan, or any pan large enough to get a thin, even spread of the coconut.
2. Toast at 350 degrees F, checking every 4-5 minutes and stirring. It should take 15-20 minutes total, careful to not let it burn!

• Unwrap all the chewy caramels and place in a microwave safe bowl with 3 Tbsp whole milk/heavy cream/regular milk/whatever and the 1/2 tsp salt. Microwave for 3-4 minutes, checking and stirring every 45 seconds-1 minute. 

1. Add toasted coconut mixture to caramel and stir to coat the coconut completely. 
2. Once cookies have cooled, start to spoon the coconut caramel mixture onto cookies. This is probably the most difficult step of the process, and to avoid the mixture sticking to the spoon or spatula instead of the cookie, I sprayed the spoon with non-stick cooking spray every couple of cookie coatings. I spooned on the mixture and then sprayed the back of a metal spatula and used that to squish the coconut caramel into the cookie. 

Chocolate Layer

1. In a double boiler, melt about 2/3 the semi-sweet chocolate chips. (Double boiler = a glass bowl sitting on top of saucepan with 1" simmering water - bowl does not touch the water. This prevents chocolate from burning.)
2. Dip coconut caramel covered cookie into the chocolate using tongs and scrape off excess chocolate if there's too much - once you place the cookie on the parchment paper, the extra chocolate will spread out. Place dipped cookies on parchment paper.
3. Put the rest of the chocolate chips into a plastic sealable bag, and melt in the microwave in 30-second increments, squishing around the chocolate in between - be careful, it gets hot towards the end!
4. Once the chocolate is melted, cut a tiny hole in the bottom corner of the plastic bag and just drizzle the chocolate on top of the cookies. You could do each cookie individually, but the chocolate flows out of the bag pretty fast, so it's easier just to go across the whole pan.

Without moving the cookies from the parchment paper, (I still had mine on the cookie pan) put the cookies in the freezer or refrigerator to harden. After the chocolate is hard, the cookies will easily come off the parchment paper, and you can just break off the excess chocolate to reveal your yummy homemade samoas! 

They are best room-temperature, or even microwaved for 10-15 seconds!