Espresso Cheesecake Brownies

It's not often that I bake&blog beside the weekly Tuesdays-with-Dorie recipe, and it has become even more rarely since I changed to a new and very, very demanding (but also very, very exciting job).
Some weeks ago I bought some Philadelphia because it was an offer (I am so easy to manipulate...). So before it expires I had to make some cheesecake with it.

Doing cheesecake is not that easy where I life, because we do not have creamcheese round here. There are numerous webpages offering hints how to mix different dairy products so they come as close as possible to creamcheese. I mostly use about 3/4 Philadelphia and 1/4 curd cheese and for me that works.

I had a "TWD-free" weeke-end last week because I pre-made the scheduled recipe (the Banana Coconut Icecream Pie) already some weeks before. I love american desserts even more than french ones, and I particularily adore cheesecakes. And brownies. So this combination screamed "bake me" for aeons.
And I really loved it. The brownie-layer turned out comparatively dense, but in combination with the cheesecake-layer that was just about right. Marbeling didn't work, because I used a too big pan so I had not enough batter left, but I used a white-chocolate glazé and decorated it with some dark chocolate glazé.
I served it with a rhubarb-strawberry hotchpotch - and look at the colour combination!!

Definitely a "do me again"-recipe.

(the only downer is that many bowls and  pots are involved due to the different layers)

P.S.: The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking: From my home to yours", or on Melissa's page Life in a peanut shell, who opted for this recipe back in September 2009)