More matcha? Yup! That bag of green tea powder has made a few recipes already, and I’m ready to try another with these Matcha Cheesecake Brownies. This one mixes matcha with cream cheese to make a cheesecake swirl in good old-fashioned chocolatey brownies. Chocolate and cheesecake are always a good combo. Now I’m going to find out if adding matcha to that combo is a Pinterest success or failure. But mostly I’m trying this recipe because the green swirls look cool.
Warm out of the oven or cooled and then chilled in the refrigerator – either way you enjoy these matcha cheesecake brownies, they are so much better than plain brownies, because what could be better than combining cheesecake with brownies anyway? Add some matcha to the mix and you have one incredible dessert.
The Ingredients
Obviously, the matcha powder is on hand, but I had to do a quick pre-shopping search for the rest. I found just enough semi-sweet chocolate chips to make one cup. I also had granulated sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla, sweet glutinous rice flour (not regular rice flour), tapioca, and salt.
That left me with a very short two-item shopping list. I bought an 11-ounce bag of Ghiradelli white chocolate chips for around $5 and used most of it for the cheesecake swirl. I had some cream cheese on hand, but not enough for this recipe so I also bought an 8-ounce bar for around $3.
Fun fact: Cream cheese is sold by weight, and 8 ounces of weight is not the same as 8 ounces of volume (i.e., 1 cup). A little searching told me 1 cup of cream cheese equals 8 ounces of weight plus 2 tablespoons. I added 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese I already had to make the 8-ounce bar I bought equal to 1 cup.
The Process
The cream cheese had to be softened, so I set it out on my counter for an hour before I wanted to make my Matcha Cheesecake Brownies. I have trouble remembering to set out ingredients to soften, but I remembered to set a reminder the day before. That was mostly because I had planned to make them the day before but forgot to set out the cream cheese, so…
Moving on! First up was preheating the oven and preparing an 8-inch x 8-inch baking pan by lining it with parchment paper. I used my trick of spraying the pan with a little avocado oil to make the parchment stick. Then I sprayed that paper before adding a second strip to ensure the sides were all covered.
Making the Matcha Cheesecake Swirl
Making the matcha cheesecake swirl was the first part of actual cooking. To get it started, I added the softened cream cheese and sugar to my stand mixer. It didn’t take long to blend, then I sifted in the matcha powder and blended until fluffy.
All that mixing gave me time to melt the white chocolate. I added 2/3 cup plus some extra so it would equal 2/3 cup melted. It gave me 1/3 cup once it was melted, so I returned it to the pan and added more. In the end, I used all but a few of the white chocolate chips (almost an entire 11-ounce bag).
When the measurements sorted out I stopped the mixer, quickly poured in the melted chocolate, and immediately turned on the mixer so the chocolate didn’t harden. Fortunately, it didn’t, and I added the eggs after the mixture looked smooth.
Making the Batter & Filling
Now it was time to make the brownie batter. I began by melting the chocolate chips and butter in a 2-quart pot. It melted quickly, so I moved it off the stove and stirred in the sugar.
It was still pretty warm, so I beat the eggs in a 2-cup measuring cup before whisking them in a little at a time. I have found that beating the eggs gives them a thinner consistency and helps them mix in faster. No one wants chocolate scrambled eggs!
Mixing in the rice flour, tapioca, and salt was the final step. It was all done in the same pot I used to melt the chocolate and butter.
Assembling the Brownies
I have made swirled brownies in the past, so this should have been easy for me. Well, it was easy, but I messed up the first batch.
The recipe says to add 3/4 of the batter to the prepared baking pan. Then add the matcha cheesecake mixture in a single layer before dolloping on the leftover brownie batter.
What I thought was 1/4 of the batter was way too much. It almost made a whole third layer, so not much of the green was revealed when I swirled everything together. Perfectionist me kept futzing with it and over-swirled.
Baking My Matcha Cheesecake Brownies
Speaking of baking, my brownies took an extra 10 minutes for a total of 40 minutes. Brownies are easy to overbake if you use the same standards for the toothpick test that you would use for a cake. Unless you want cakey brownies, that is, though they might be a bit dry and hard to cut once cooled. I speak from experience.
When brownies are done, the toothpick should come out with some batter on it and some crumbs clinging to the batter. The center will be quite soft but will firm up in the refrigerator and have a fudgy consistency. Yes, they need to be refrigerated or they will not be firm enough to cut into neat squares. If the toothpick comes out with only batter and no crumbs, the brownies are underdone and need to bake a little longer. I checked mine at 5-minute intervals.
Whelp, I kind of got a matcha swirl going on, but it wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be. There just wasn’t enough green showing in all the brown. It was more of a green layer between the layers of chocolate, and it was only visible when the brownies were cut up. They tasted great and were gone in a flash, but I had to make them again and see if I could get that beautiful swirl.
My Second Try
I was fortunate to have enough of almost everything to make this recipe a second time. I did have to pop out for some cream cheese, but that was it.
Before I began, I made sure to study the photos in this recipe’s blog post. There is a good one of the batter dolloped onto the cheesecake layer before swirling. It has 8-9 dollops of brownie batter on top of the cream cheese layer, and that gave me an idea.
This time I didn’t eyeball the amount of brown batter to set aside for the top layer. I measured 9 tablespoons of batter into a smaller bowl. And I took out a tablespoon of that to be really safe. As you can see, it worked perfectly. I got those beautiful green swirls I wanted. Yay!
You know how sometimes you can have a batter or dough that’s a really pretty color, but it still bakes up brown? I recall a pink strawberry pie crust that did that, and it was so disappointing. That didn’t happen here. The color of the green swirls wasn’t as vibrant after baking, but it was very much there and very matcha green. It made really cool-looking brownies!
Timing
This recipe listed 10 minutes to prep, 30 minutes to cook, and a total time of 40 minutes. Here’s how my time was spent:
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- 3 minutes to line the pan with parchment
- 13 minutes to make the matcha swirl
- 9 minutes to make the brownie bater
- 8 minutes to assemble
- 40 minutes to bake
- 1 hour 13 minutes total
Baking took an extra 10 minutes, and it didn’t surprise me. That happens a lot, and I think it’s my oven. The real slow-down was in the prep work, but I’m at a loss as to why since things moved along smoothly.
