Flourless Chocolate Cookies...err Brownies....err Cheesecake

My family has a house at Ocean Isle Beach.  If you've never been, do yourself a favor and put it on your list of places to visit.  It's beautiful and oh so relaxing.  We've been spending the past couple of days playing in the sand, chasing the waves and enjoying the cool ocean breeze.  It's been wonderful!!

A friend who was down visiting with us gave my little one a mini baking kit.  Of course, she wanted to make something right away and who am I to say no!  I mean look at that face.  Who could?

She wanted to make cookies, which was great, except there was no flour in the house.  Instead of packing everyone in the car and heading to the grocery store, I decided this would be a perfect time to try out a recipe for flourless chocolate cookies that I had run across some time ago.  After all, with the amount of people requesting gluten free options growing everyday, I need to find a "go to" gluten free cookie.  Sadly I have yet to find it yet...

I started with a recipe I found on Living Well Spending Less.  We had everything we needed except the chocolate chips, which were optional anyway so no big deal.  I did the recipe exactly as instructed since I am fairly new to completely flourless cooking.  Here's what was needed.

2 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 c unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
1 whole egg
2 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla

I combined all the dry ingredients in one bowl and whisked together the wet ingredients in another.  I added the wet to the dry and stirred for what seem like forever.  The batter just never came together.  It was way too dry.  No matter how much I stirred, there just wasn't enough wet to get everything to incorporate. 

To try and correct this problem, I added about 1/2 c milk to the bowl.  Now I ended up with the opposite problem.  The batter was now too wet to form cookies. 

I was afraid if I added more powdered sugar the batter would be WAY too sweet, so we scrapped the idea of doing cookies and decided they would be more like brownies.  I sprayed down a square baking dish, added the batter and popped it in the oven at 350.  Baking took about 35 minutes for a toothpick to come out clean in the middle.  Now we just had to let them cool so we could taste our new creation.

Tasting reviews were mixed on the final product.  Even though the batter was baked through, it still ended up pretty soft and chewy.  Something that really needed to be eaten with a spoon as opposed to being able to cut and eat like a traditional brownie.  My little one LOVED them.  My mom thought they would be fine in small batches.  Another thought it needed to be covered in vanilla ice cream.  Ad for me, I thought it was WAY TOO SWEET.  I'm not a huge chocolate person anyway and this was just a mouthful of super sweet gooey chocolate.  I could barely get the small bite I took down.  After seeing the sad dish sitting on the kitchen counter all day with no one touching it again, I decided I needed to find a way to use it so that it didn't go to waste.  I wasn't letting this one go without a fight!

So I came up with the idea to use it as the base of a cheesecake.  I scooped it out of the brownie dish onto a sheet tray and tried to get it to dry out in the oven so I could make it more of a crumb crust.

When that didn't work, I lined my pan with plastic wrap and smeared the chocolate creation on the bottom.  This used most of it so I didn't feel as bad when I had to wash the remaining portion down the drain.  Now to whip up the cheesecake.

My go to cheesecake recipe is adapted from Food for a Hungry Soul.  You need the following:

3 eggs, room temperature
1 c sour cream; room temperature
16 oz cream cheese; room temperature
4 T butter; room temperature
3/4 c sugar
1 T cornstarch
1 T vanilla

Note: This will make a cheesecake that is about 1 inch tall.  If you have a deep pan, double the recipe for a nice, tall cheesecake.

1 - In the bowl of a mixer with whisk attachment, combine eggs and sour cream until well blended.  Add cream cheese and mix well.  Add butter and allow to mix for 5-10 minutes until the mixer is very smooth and creamy.  Scrape the bowl often to make sure you have no lumps.
2 - Add remaining ingredients and mix until well combined.

From this point, I poured the batter over the chocolate bottom, put the pan inside a roasting pan in the oven, added enough water to the roasting pan to come halfway up the cheesecake pan and baked the cheesecake at 350 for about 1 1/2 hours.

The end result was a huge hit!  The tartness of the cheesecake was the perfect compliment to the extreme sweetness of the chocolate.  Although I doubt I will go through this entire process again just to make a "crust" for my cheesecake, it was the perfect example of making something out of a baking mishap.  After all, things don't always turn out the way you want them to.  The fun part becomes figuring out what you can do to create something you do like...and can even be proud of!