Raspberry Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies (Gluten Free)

(Here is another guest post. This one is from my mom's Super Bowl Party.) Our super bowl party was unique in that the guests’ combined food allergies included nuts and wheat, plus then we have a few vegetarians thrown into the mix. Wishing to expand beyond popcorn and rice krispie treats, we adapted the following recipe to make it gluten free. How can you go wrong with chocolate, cream cheese, lemon and raspberries?

It looks as if everyone is pretty happy with the offerings of the night. My mom has mentioned before how tricky it is to prepare food for her church small group with such unique dietary, er, restrictions. For example, we've got the gluten-free folks who can't eat all variety of wheat items and the vegetarians who don't eat meat. That cuts out, oh, about half the food pyramid, maybe more. (Not that my mom has ever complained about it, but just think about it, that's a lot). It seems as if these sorts of diets are becoming easier to work with of late. It's pretty normal to have vegetarians around (at least for me if not my dad) and I see a lot of gluten-free stuff at the grocer (not all of which is good). My parents have discovered some trully wretched gluten-free crackers that they served once with cheese. Even I wouldn't eat them.

But as you can see in the above photo, those gluten-free brownies look killer. My mom replaced wheat flour in the recipe with rice flour. I'd think you could do this for a lot of baked goods. Maybe not homemade bread, but cookies for sure. Good thing everybody can handle chocolate. I have no other knowledge about cooking anything gluten-free. I hardly know what it is. But here's a blog that might have better insight.

You can see in the above photo where I get my messiness from. Note: my mom is way way way cleaner than I am. I'll learn someday I suppose.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies:

3/4 stick butter 2 1/2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate coarsely chopped 1 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 3/4 cup flour ( we substituted rice flour) 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/4 cups sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla 2 eggs Cream cheese swirl: 8 ounces cream cheese slightly softened and cut into chunks 1/3 cup sugar 2 tablespoons butter, melted 1 egg 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest 1/3 teaspoon vanilla 1/3 cup seedless raspberry preserves Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a 9 inch square baking pan. In a medium bowl, microwave the butter and chocolates for 1 minute. Stir well. Continue microwaving at 50 percent power, stirring at 30 second intervals until nearly melted. Let the residual heat finish the job. Stir the sugar and vanilla into the chocolate mixture. Beat in the eggs and mix until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the flour and pour 2/3 of the mixture into baking pan, saving the remainder for the topping. Process or mix the cream cheese, sugar, butter, egg, lemon zest and vanilla until well blended and smooth. Drop the cream cheese mixture by tablespoons over the batter. Evenly drop the raspberry preserves by teaspoons over the cream cheese. Spoon the remaining chocolate batter into 4 or 5 pools over the top. Swirl with a knife. Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. It was delicious and disappeared before halftime.