Red Velvet Brownies with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting

We've been back home in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 5 days now. It's cold and there's lots of snow. Everything looks beautiful but whilst we were away the pipes froze in our house which means we have no water except in the kitchen. As well as the pipes freezing, the water in the toilet froze and cracked the toilet bowl! All of this means that for the last 5 days and probably for at least the next 5 days we have no toilet and no shower. At first it was kinda fun, but now as there is no sign of a thaw coming the reality of it is annoying. To make up for the annoying-ness I decided it was time to do some baking. 


Red Velvet Brownies with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting:
The recipe for the brownies I got from smells-like-home.com Here it is converted into European measures:


3 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp red food colouring
2 tsp vanilla extract, divided
113g unsalted butter at room temperature
340g granulated sugar
2 large eggs
160g all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line a 20cm x 20cm tin with baking paper.
In a small bowl, stir together cocoa powder, food colouring and 1 tsp vanilla to make a thick paste and leave to one side.
In another bowl cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time and keep mixing. Add the remaining 1 tsp vanilla and mix.
Now add the cocoa paste and mix until the mixture is one uniform colour - red!
Slowly add the flour and salt, mixing until everything is combined.
It should look like this:

Pour the batter into the already prepared tin and cook for 30-40mins, until a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean.


Leave to cool in the pan for 30mins. Take them out of the pan and add the frosting, then cut into squares as desired.


I got the recipe for the Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting from chaosinthekitchen.com. I halved their amounts and converted it to European measures:


100g cream cheese
60g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 vanilla bean pod
375g icing sugar


Slit open the vanilla bean with a sharp knife and use the tip of the knife to scrape out half the paste.
Beat the butter and cream cheese together in a bowl until they are combined.
Add the vanilla pod paste and the vanilla extract and mix well.
Add the icing sugar slowly and keep mixing until you have the consistency you like for frosting. It should end up looking something like this: