Mmmmm... Brownies

OK, so I've been away for a while. Partly due to a crazy summer schedule, and of course, partly due to apathy, but I'm back now. No, really.
Although I didn't get too ambitious in the kitchen over the summer, one of my few culinary exploits concerned chocolate. And cheesecake. And more chocolate.

The recipe is a result of the World Nutella Day event I participated in back in February, and is courtesy of Mary at AlpineBerry. It can be found here.

The family summer party/picnic/softball game was once again held at my parents cottage, and of course, I was expected to contribute something tasty to dinner. It's always a challenge for me to come up with something interesting (and different from past years' contributions), and that will survive the hour-and-a-half drive north.

In the past, I have made some spicy samosas or other similar appetizers, but this year I thought that I would make a dessert. Enter the brownies.

These are not only brownies, they are CHEESECAKE brownies. And they're not only cheesecake brownies, they're NUTELLA cheesecake brownies. The bottom half is a nice chocolatey brownie mixture, which includes a few healthy dollops of Nutella. Mmmmm... Nutella... The top layer is a chocolate cheesecake concoction, which also contains - you guessed it - a few healthy dollops of Nutella. Then, as if that wasn't enough, I topped the incredibly decadent, and really quite evil, brownies with some shaved white chocolate.

The only problem with making two pans of evil cheesecake brownies, is that after bringing one of the pans to the cottage party, I was still left with a whole pan for myself.

Now, I can hear you saying, "but Ian, how can that possibly be a problem?" While I realize that most of you would welcome this kind of 'problem', I've been on kind of a weight-loss kick just lately. I've found that eating a whole pan of brownies by oneself (while immensely satisfying), is really not conducive to actually LOSING weight. Lots of extra sit-ups were required. Now... I say 'required', but not really 'performed'. There's a hitch in that plan somewhere... hmmmm...

So, as I mentioned before, the summer was a bit slow for me cooking-wise, but I'm back at it and will try to post more often than once a month. Cheers!