Cream cheese betters brownies

A good baker of my acquaintance once told me that everything tastes better with cream cheese. This is an easy hypothesis to test. Bake brownies, make them nice and fudgy. Announce that you have made brownies. Take a beat, then add, "with cream cheese swirl," and see how much faster people flock to the dessert table.

Jayne Higa knew the value of such a treat. She had a tried-and-true cream cheese brownie recipe, cut from a newspaper in the 1980s. "I would make this every Christmas as gifts," Higa wrote. "It was a REALLY wonderfully delicious recipe that people looked forward to receiving. As time has gone on, I seemed to have lost it."

Enter the recipe posse, which responded to Higa’s loss with enthusiasm, some sending copies of actual Honolulu Advertiser clippings. Turns out there were two recipes published in the ’80s, one called simply Cream Cheese Brownies; the other, No-Holds-Barred Brownie.

I’ve sent both to Higa but picked the first one to arrive for my own testing. The only significant difference is that one included walnuts and almond extract instead of vanilla.

First to come through was Brenda Morris of Mililani, who is a recipe posse in herself.

Morris has more than 1,000 cookbooks and keeps loose recipe clippings in folders stored in plastic bins. "I type up those I find very interesting that I want to be sure to keep and not misplace." These are stored in her computer (backed up, I hope).

Now, those stray recipes in the folders are not really organized, and she’d baked these brownies maybe once in 20 years, so I find it rather miraculous that she was able to lay her hands on this exact recipe within a few hours of reading Higa’s request in this column.

It so happens, Morris said, that she had come across it recently when culling her stash. Besides, "I kinda remember a lot of the recipes that I have. It’s a passion for me."

Morris did not save the date on her newspaper clipping, but it was written up by Patsy Matsuura, the Advertiser’s food editor from 1987 to 1993, known for featuring local cooks in a "My Best Recipe" feature. She credited this recipe to Pamela Tsuzaki.

NO-HOLDS-BARRED BROWNIE

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1-1/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
3/4 cup flour

>> Cream Cheese mixture:
8 ounces cream cheese
1-1/2 teaspoons flour
5 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease an 8- or 9-inch square baking pan.

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat or over a double boiler (or microwave 30 seconds, stir and microwave another 30 seconds). Cool slightly.

Place sugar in mixing bowl; slowly add chocolate mixture. Add vanilla, then eggs, one at time, blending between additions. Gradually add flour and mix well. Spread 3/4 of batter in pan. Set aside the rest.

Blend all ingredients in cream cheese mixture. Spread over brownie batter. Drop remaining brownie batter in

12 mounds over cream cheese layer, leaving space between each mound. Draw a knife through the mounds, creating a brown-and-white swirl in the cream cheese.

Bake 50 minutes. Let cool on rack, then slice.

Nutritional information unavailable.

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Write "By Request," Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813; or email bshimabukuro@staradvertiser.com.