Loaded Cream Cheese Brownies

I made these for Halloween with an orange cream cheese layer (based on a recipe found here) but you could use any color you want or even just leave it white and they'll still be pretty! Love this idea, my only concern is how long they took to bake - recipe says 43-45 but it look much longer. I lost track of how long I left them in but I'd say 55 minutes and even then they looked extremely underdone. As they cooled they did set up a bit more, and if you like your brownies to be on the fudgey side you'll probably find these the perfect texture. The inspiration recipe used broken oreos and chocolate chips on top, I added more things including snow caps, mini oreos, thin chocolate wafer cookies, white chips, orange m&m's, candy eyes, and halloween sprinkles. 

Side note - did you know you can bake oreos on top of brownies? I would have said no, but it worked. What didn't work were the white chips and candy eyes, they turned brown after being in the oven so long - but there was so much going on on top of my brownies you didn't even realize the white chips were no longer white! To serve, in our Covid pandemic world, I cut them in very small bite sized pieces, about 1" squares, and put each one in a small cupcake liner. That way it made for individual single-sized portions and no one touched any other brownie except their own. I also added fresh candy eyes for presentation and a few more sprinkles to fill in any holes. I didn't take a picture of the presentation, use your imagination - bite sized brownies in individual cupcake/muffin liner cups looks just like it sounds :) 

I used a brownie mix (I like Ghirardelli's triple chocolate, but any box that makes an 8x8" pan will work), adding the ingredients called for on the box. Pour it into a foiled lined and sprayed with non-stick baking spray 8"x8" pan. 

For the cream cheese layer: 

• 8 oz. brick style cream cheese, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup sugar

Mix together with an electric mixture for 2 minutes. Add food coloring of your choice (optional, you could just leave it white) for this orange the recipe called for 10 drops yellow and 5 drops red but that wasn't near enough to get it bright orange. I stopped counting drops and just kept adding a mixture of yellow and red to get the desired color. Use your judgement. 

Add the cream cheese topping in big spoonfuls on top of the brownie dough, carefully spread it to about 1/2" of the edge. Add all the crazy toppings you want and bake in a 350' oven for 43-45 minutes or until set. Note it's hard to tell when the brownie layer is done since there's melty chips and the cream cheese layer to stick a tester thru. Mine were clearly underdone at the 45 minute mark without even having to test. Just keep an eye on them, maybe you'll have better luck with them being done around 45 minutes. 

Here's what it looked like when out of the oven - see how the white chips turned brown? Tasted fine and there's so much shizzle going on no one could even tell.