Green Velvet Cheesecake Swirled Shamrock Brownies

This idea and recipe are totally from The Novice Chef's Marbled Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies.  She made incredible red velvet heart brownies marbled with cheesecake.  I was so in love with hers and wanted to bake them myself.  However, with St. Patrick's Day on the horizon I decided to make green velvet brownies in a shamrock shape.  They turned out okay, but The Novice Chef's look much better.  I can say, though, that they are DELICIOUS!!  This recipe is a keeper.  AND, she used the cut-out scraps to make a milkshake.  Wow.  She's a genius!  You should definitely visit her site, she has a lot of great things going on.

Green Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

recipe and idea from The Novice Chef

Green Velvet Layer:

3 1/4 cups  flour

2 1/4 cups granulated sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

3 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

4 tablespoons milk, divided

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons green food coloring

2 teaspoons white vinegar

Cheesecake Layer:

2 8oz. packages of cream cheese, softened

3/4 cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Grease 13x18 inch jelly roll pan (I used a cookie sheet with raised sides)
• In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder, set aside.

• In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons of milk, vanilla extract, green food coloring,  and white vinegar.

• Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until completely combined.
• The batter will be very thick, this is the texture you want.

• Remove 3/4 of the dough and place it in a medium bowl.
• Whisk the remaining 2 tablespoons of milk into the 1/4 of dough, set aside.

• Pour remaining 3/4 of the batter into pan.  Spread batter smooth with a spatula, making sure it reaches the edges of pan.

• In stand mixer or electric hand mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until creamy.
• Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth with no lumps.

• Pour cream cheese mixture on top of green velvet brownie layer and spread until smooth, again, until it reaches the edges.

• Drop spoonfuls of remaining green velvet batter on top of the cheesecake layer.

• Using a knife, drag through green velvet and cheesecake to create swirls.

• Bake for 30 minutes (or until center is set and no longer jiggly), rotating pan 1/2 way through.  
• Let cool completely before cutting shapes with a cutter.

As I said, these taste phenomenal, but they could have been a little cuter!  I have something to aspire to, which is fine because I will make these again. I think I will use a little less green food coloring next time.  I did scale it back from 1 tablespoon the red velvet called for, but I think these still turned out a little too dark.  Anyway, my husband LOVED them.  Since he is not a sweets eater, I'm always thrilled to find something to bake for him on special occasions.  

Tomorrow, I'm going to take a break from green and make something springy and colorful.   Stay tuned!

"Top Of The Morning To Ya" Peach Pies

Okay, so these are really a variation of a theme, but I really enjoyed the stenciled Conversation Heart Cherry Pies and thought it would be cute to make a St. Patrick's Day version.  The fundraiser on St. Patrick's Day I'm donating  sweets to is coming up and these will be a fun addition to cupcakes, cookies, and brownies I'm planning to bake. Since I already had the Celtic Stencils on hand from sugar cookies I made a few months ago, all I needed was:

•  pie crust dough
•  a cookie cutter 
•  peach filling 
• edible food powder 
• a food paintbrush.

Stenciling is pretty simple.  You just need to be very careful when lifting the stencil in such a way you prevent the colored powder from spreading itself outside of the design.  While I had no problems while stenciling cookies, for some reason the pie crust was more challenging.  I don't have an explanation for this, I'm just making note of it.  Some of them got really messy with spatters of green powder and I couldn't use them.  To see the step-by-step process of putting together these pies, please click here for the details.  

In keeping with St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to use the colors found in the flag of Ireland: green, white, and orange.  Green would be represented by the stencil color, white by the crust, and orange by the peach filling.  I experimented with two colors of powder, dark green and light pearl green:

Sealed them up and placed them in the oven:

They cooked up nicely, but I thought the light green (top pie) was too light and the dark green (2 middle pies) were too dark, so I mixed the two and came up with a dark-ish sparkly green (bottom 2 pies) that I was happy with:

Did I mention I love peach pie?  Well, I love all fruit pies, actually:

I love how quickly these little pies bake up.  The prep time is minimal, especially if you don't stencil and, instead, sprinkle powdered sugar on them after they've cooled.  Also, they are wonderfully portable.  My friend Amy was visiting me from Buffalo this past weekend and I gave her a few for the plane ride home.  She suggested adding some coarse to the top crust before baking.  I think that's a fantastic idea and I'll definitely do that for the bake sale!

Make Your Own Shamrock Shakes - Even Better Than the Real Thing!

I didn't believe it when I read the claim...a copycat recipe for Shamrock Shakes?  I could believe a tasty mint shake, but one that tastes like THE Shamrock Shake?  Is it possible to re-create it right in our kitchens?  In a word:  Yes!  Here's how you do it:

McDonald's Shamrock Shake Copycat Recipe

Recipe by Naptimechef

3 cups good quality vanilla ice cream

1 3/4 cups 1% milk

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

green food coloring

Put all of the ingredients into a blender and blend.  That's it.  Seriously.

 Here are my notes:

• I used 2% milk and it turned out fine.  I also used French Vanilla ice cream, which may alter the taste just a bit.  Next time I'll use plain old vanilla just for comparison.
• I have a blender, but I don't really blend things, so I didn't know which setting to put it on.  I used a little of each!  None of them seemed to combine all of the ice cream and milk, so I used a spoon to push the ice cream down (after turning the blender OFF, of course) and mix it up a bit.
• I wanted my shake a little thicker, so I used almost all of a 1.5 gallon carton of ice cream.
• This makes about 3 full beer mugs of shake.  You can easily make it for one or two people by playing around with the measurements.  It's certainly not an exact science, as some like their shakes thick, and some like them thin.
• A little mint extract goes a long way.  If I had added one drop more than 1/2 teaspoon, it would have been too strong.  Again, though, it's a preference thing.
• The dye did not mix up in the blender, I had to mix it by hand, after the ice cream and milk were blended.  I started with two drops of liquid green dye and ended up using quite a bit more until I reached the pale, green color I wanted.
• To store the leftovers I poured the shake back into the ice cream container and put it in the freezer.  When I am ready to serve more, I'll blend it back up and hope it tastes good.  :)
• It's delicious and I loved it.  You should make it, too!!

Sláinte!!