When entrusted with dessert duties for a dinner party, some people whip up their grandma’s famous cowboy cookies, or the charmingly vintage chocolate roll cake their family has been making for decades. But when I’m in charge of the last course, I grab the fluted tart pan and start melting chocolate and coffee together for a Cajeta Cream Cheese Brownie Tart.
I first became enamored with this recipe in 2020, when blogger and author Esteban Castillo published his first cookbook, Chicano Eats. Among the recipes for tacos de papa and chorizo squash tortas, the book contains plenty of intricate desserts based on the nostalgic candies Castillo grew up eating. There’s a tricolor Jell-O mold inspired by Duvalin—a Mexican candy that combines strawberry, hazelnut, and vanilla creams (Castillo describes the candy as having “the texture of store-bought frosting.”) Then there’s the Cajeta Cream Cheese Brownie Tart, inspired by the little wooden boats full of cajeta that Castillo grew up bringing home from trips to Colima.
Cajeta, which is similar to dulce de leche but made with goat’s milk, has a tangy edge that’s hard to find in other caramels. The caramel has inspired Hershey candy bars and flavors of champurrado, but when mixed with tangy cream cheese, its fruity, ripe quality shines even more.
Castillo celebrates that tangy combination by rippling a cajeta-sweetened cream cheese mixture through a batch of fudgy chocolate brownies. An egg added to the cream cheese component keeps the swirls buoyant and fluffy after they’re baked. Since the brownie base starts with a combination of coffee and chocolate (he opts for Abuelita tablets, but I’ll admit to sometimes using semisweet chocolate chips out of convenience), the brownies are satisfyingly bitter and robust—an ideal foil for the bright cream cheese swirls. If your past attempts at marbled cheesecakes have turned out muddy and messy for all your effort, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by Castillo’s technique here, which involves sandwiching the cream cheese between layers of brownie batter before using a skewer to swirl with a light touch.
My favorite part of this recipe is the fact that it’s basically a cake with the icing baked into it. No need to bake and cool layers, whip together an elaborate topping, and then decorate—this tart comes out of the oven ready to set straight on a decorative cake stand (or carry a few blocks to your friend’s house while it cools en route).
