Chocolate Chess Squares

So I was reading a hilarious book called How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper, and in it she makes something called chocolate chess squares.  Not being from the South, I had never heard of chess squares, let alone chocolate chess squares.  She describes them as brownies crossed with cheesecake.  Being a fan of both chocolate and cheesecake, I decided that I needed to make them.  Since there was not a recipe in the book and I am in no way familiar with chess squares, I had to find a recipe.  Being the industrious Millennial future librarian that I am, I did what any one would do-- I Googled it.  I found a cool blog called Kevin & Amanda that had the recipe for chess squares.  They said that the recipe was very close to Paula Deen's Gooey Butter Cake.  I wanted the "best"/easiest recipe.... I also wanted one that didn't use 2 sticks of butter. I looked up Bobby Deen's Lighter Gooey Butter Cake, which really should be called yogurt cake, but not really the point here.  I didn't have any Greek yogurt, so I decided to go for Kevin & Amanda's recipe with a little twist, namely make it chocolate and add some vanilla.

So the recipe is:
1 box of chocolate cake mix
3 eggs
1 stick of margarine, melted (because I don't like butter)
1 8oz package of cream cheese (softened to room temperature)
4 cups of powered sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract

Grease 9x13 cake pan with non-stick spray. Mix cake mix, 1 egg, and melted margarine into a soft dough.  (It's similar to the texture of bread dough) Press into the cake pan.  It was easier to to press it into the pan after I got some of the non-stick spray on my fingers.  Then mix the cream cheese, 2 eggs, vanilla, and powered sugar with a beater.  It was really thick and sorta hard to mix with the beaters, but some patience and critical thinking skills saved the day. (Pull the beater up before it gets too bogged down, but not too fast or the batter will splash everywhere)  Then pour the mixture over the dough and bake 40-50 minutes.

well...

Looks like it's been a year since my last blog... I decided to start again, but I don't really have anything interesting to talk about, nor do I think that most people care.  But we shall see.