How this is starting. Great American Cookie Co cheesecake brownies. Oh yes. It is.

This all started with a craving for Cheesecake Brownies from the Great American Cookie Company. I love those things. Seriously, love them. And I really wanted one. Badly. But I just cant afford to pay $5 for a brownie. One, small brownie. So I started looking for a recipe online. Surely, someone, somewhere, had this same craving as I had and had already duplicated the recipe. Alas, nada. Not one. A couple of people were asking for one, but no recipes. I was disappointed, but not deterred. I started breaking the flavors down by memory, in my head. I knew how to make the crust, due to a teenage job at said cookie company, so I pondered on the filling. I was honestly stumped and surfing around looking for a recipe while I thought on it, and came across a great blog, Amanda and Kevin (which you should check out, she has some great recipes in it). In her blog she is talking about her chess squares recipe, and commented that the flavor reminded her of the very cheesecake brownies I was so set on, and it got me thinking. I am familiar with chess squares, my grandmother has been making them since I was a kid, and the flavor was similar, and the right color as well. Of course, the texture was all wrong, so then I had to figure out how to make an ooey gooey dessert stiffer and more brownie like in texture. After much thought and deliberation, I decided that separating the eggs and whipping the whites, as well as adding in some flour, would give me at least a starting point. Imagine my surprise when I hit the nail on the head first try! I wanted to put this recipe out there, and began thinking about starting a blog. It was originally going to be about recipes I have created, or will create. I have a whole bunch of super cheap, super easy meals that are delish leftover from my college days, recipes that needed to be foolproof due to a lack of sobriety while cooking most of them, and needed to be as thrifty as possible due to a lack of funds. But my years of being flat broke, combined with being raised by an incredibly thrifty, crafty woman, has made me very creative in other areas of life as well. You see, I love being fabulous. My role models, from Lucille ball to Marilyn Monroe to your average 50's housewife did everything with style, and did it well.  Unfortunately, fabulous is not cheap, unless of course, youre me and you figure out how to do it cheaper than most people achieve average. The thing is though, Im not stingy with the advice. I love to share my knowledge and tips and tricks, my cute ideas and money saving ideas. So I decided to make this an all encompassing blog, and just fill it with every thing I do to make my life richer. This includes tips on how to achieve a fabulous mindset, because fabulous (wonderful, amazing, inspiring, role model, whatever you wanna call it) is as much as state of mind as being a jedi. Here follows a recipe for a dessert that taste amazingly like the cheesecake brownies from Great American Cookie Company, and Ill follow up with more recipes, and whatever else I feel the need to share. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 2 cups of stale chocolate chip cookies, crumbled very fine,(you can do this with a food processor, but I did it by hand. If they are stale, they crumble right up and its pretty good therapy. lol) half stick of butter, melted, two eggs separated, 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar (a little over 1lb), 8oz cream cheese softened, 1 cup flour, 1 cup white chocolate chips or chunks (chunks taste better, but the chips are optional, I didnt have any at the time I was making these and left them out and its delish this way, but you need the chips for it to taste the most like the cheesecake brownies. Without the chips I put it into muffin tins and call it baked cream cheese frosting. Also, please keep in mind that the one cup is a minimum suggestion, go crazy!)
Instructions: Preheat oven to 350. Mix the cookie crumbs and butter till the crumbs are thoroughly saturated. Press into the bottom of a greased brownie pan (or muffin tins). You can use more or less crumbs to your own liking, the thicker the crust the better. Meanwhile, cream the egg yolks and cream cheese, and slowly add flour and powder sugar. Beat the egg whites with a mixer till they reach the soft peak stage (they will be very firm and if you lift the beater up, the egg whites will follow the beater and when they cant stretch anymore, will form a peak that flops at the very tip, like a peep.) Fold the egg whites and the choc chips into the batter. Pour over the cookie crumb crust. Bake at 350, for roughly 45 mins. The brownies will have baked straight up over the top and started cracking on the top, much like a cheesecake/souffle, and will appear slightly moist and white, though brown on the edges. Knife inserted will NOT come out clean, this is something your gonna have to eyeball. When the edges start to brown and the aroma becomes amazing, they are done. Let them cool, they will fall back down as they cool, and then serve! Like I said, this time I didnt have and chips, so I made individual muffins and am calling them baked cream cheese frosting, I took a quick picture so you can see one broke open, but its missing its chips, just an fyi!

                                                                             YUM