Diet? What diet?

With many of my days taken up with personal assistant work, I find that I have little time to experiment in my own kitchen. For meals at home, I've been concentrating on big-batch, easy-to-reheat stuff, like burrito mixings and big pots of chili.

But today I had some free time, and it was raining outside. So with no regards to the upcoming beach season, I decided to make something scrumptiously rich and decadent: chocolate cheesecake squares.

To start, I make a crust. I smooshed one package of graham crackers into
crumbs in a bowl. This gave me enough to cover the bottom of an 8x8
pan. Conversely, you can also smoosh the crackers in a plastic bag. I just
like saying the word 'smoooooosh'.

Lots o crumbs! To this, I added about... 3 tablespoons of melted butter.

I carefully pressed the crumb and butter mixture into the 8x8 pan, which I
had previously lined with foil. This will (hopefully) make the whole thing
easier to extract later. Then I popped the crust into a 350 degree oven for
about 10 minutes to set up a little.

While the crust is par-baking, I made my filling. 1 block of softened cream
cheese, 1 egg, 1 tbsp of flour, 1/2 tbsp of vanilla, and half a cup of
confectioner's sugar is beaten into submission via a hand mixer.

After about 4 or 5 minutes, the mixture is well blended. I reserved a
tablespoon or two of the powdered sugar; I wanted to taste the filling
first to see how sweet it was. In the end, I used just under the half cup...
maybe about 7 tablespoons.

The pan is taken from the oven, and the filling is oh-so-carefully spread
on top. Kind of a delicate procedure, as the graham crumbs were still
slightly loose. Then back into the oven it goes, for about 30-40 minutes.

Side note here. I used a random recipe I found online, but also realized that I could have made this a no-bake treat. The simple mix of cream cheese, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla makes an AWESOME cream cheese filling in its own right. I could have made a graham cracker (or Oreo!) base in a parfait cup, and topped it with the non-egged-up filling. Yummmm. I guess I know what I'm making next time!

Near the end of the baking time, I placed 5 ounces of chocolate to melt
in a double boiler with 1 1/2 tbsp of butter. Yeah, what diet indeed.

Melty chocolate goodness. This step can be done (in 10 second spurts)
in the microwave too. 

I forgot to grab a pic of the pan pre-chocolating. Post-bake, the cream
cheese filling didn't look too different. It seemed to have puffed up a little
bit, that's about it. I took it out of my oven in about 35 minutes, when the
sides were ever-so-slightly darker. 

Then comes the most difficult part... waiting for it to cool. I popped it in the fridge after a while, for about 2 hours. This setting time makes the end result easier to cut into.

Ahh, eating time at last! The graham crust didn't hold together completely;
I suspect that more butter could have solved that problem.

The layers were also really lopsided; I didn't spread them very evenly.
But the classic combination of graham crackers, cream cheese, and
chocolate is delicious no matter how it's combined.