"Barbenheimer" cheesecake brownies are the darkest, pinkest treat of the summer

It took weeks of tense negotiations, but earlier this week, my daughters reached an agreement regarding the when, where and how for their planned shared "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" experience. I told them to bring snacks.

The counterprogramming of a bleak Christopher Nolan biopic about the father of the atomic bomb and Greta Gerwig's bubblegum pink fantasia about an iconic doll has already become one of the greatest mashups in pop culture history. It has spawned t-shirts, mock trailers and endless memes. Naturally, I wanted to get in on the action the best way I know how — by baking something. But while Barbie on her own has been a muse for plenty of sweet, pink-themed summer treats, the Barbenheimer pickings have been disappointingly slim.

In search of something that would satisfy the criteria of equal parts darkness and pinkness, I considered doing a rosy variant on the New York City classic, the black and white cookie. What I really wanted, however, was something that truly captured the vibe, the harmony and the tension. What I wanted was the greatest treat ever invented — cheesecake brownies.

The cheesecake brownie is quite possibly. And while I have on more ambitious occasions made mine entirely from scratch, I see no reason not to get a nice head start here with a mix and then just plonk in a simple cream cheese filling, tinted in honor of the Mattel superstar. I have also mixed in a little espresso powder to the brownie mix to amp up intensity and the color, but it's not a dealbreaker if you don't keep in on hand.

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These are sweet but not too sweet, dark but beautifully dark,  a combination of two equally compelling yet dramatically different experiences. In other words, they're everything that Barbenheimer juggernaut proves we all need right now. In other words, they're everything. Anything else is just Ken.

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Inspired by  Betty Crocker and Recipes by Nora

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