Easy Cheesecake Bars
From Smitten Kitchen! What more do you need to know?
You can play around with all the elements of this recipe to create your perfect bar!
You can play around with all the elements of this recipe to create your perfect bar!
Crust:
2 cups graham or cookie crumbs 1/4 cup sugar 6 tbsp butter, melted a pinch of salt 1/2 tsp vanilla (optional) Filling: 3 8 oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature 1 cup sugar 4 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract Topping (optional): 2 cups sour cream 2 tbsp sugar 1 tsp vanilla 3 to 4 cups mixed berries, cleaned and dried |
Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Line bottom and sides of an 9×13-inch rectangular baking pan with 2 sheets of foil (crisscrossed), leaving a 2-inch overhang on all sides.
Make crust: Combine crumbs, sugar, butter, salt and vanilla in a bowl with a fork until evenly mixed. Press firmly into bottom of prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Make cheesecake: While crust is baking, beat cream cheese until fluffy with sugar, then beat in eggs, one at a time, until thoroughly mixed, scraping down the sides and bottom of your bowl between each addition. Beat in vanilla. Pour over prepared crust (still hot is fine) and bake for 25 minutes, until puffed but still jiggly like Jell-O when shimmied. Let cool on rack for 5 minutes, and while it does… Make topping: Whisk together sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. Drop spoonfuls of topping all over bars and spread gently in one thin layer. Bake bars with topping for 10 minutes. Set pan on a cooling rack and let cool; refrigerate at least 2 hours or ideally overnight. To serve: Use foil sling to carefully lift bars out of pan and transfer them to a cutting board. If you can, carefully slide them off their foil — this should be doable, but I did manage to crack my whole slab of bars while doing so, so proceed at your own risk. Scatter berries all over cake. Cut gently into 2×2-ish-inch squares with a serrated knife. Keep leftovers in fridge. |
Source
Notes:
Notes:
- For the crust: you can rely on the old standby of graham crackers, or you can go chocolate with these cookies, or an Oreo crust!
- Titrate the amount of sugar and butter for each type of cookie. The mixture should hold together, but not be overly greasy. If it is, you can always add more crumbs!
- For the filling: The recipe listed makes a base cheesecake which can be augmented in so many ways! You add in swirls of fruits, jams or compotes, make it a chocolate filling, whatever you can imagine!
- For the topping: why do we top cheesecakes? To hide the cracks! This recipe has a classic sour cream topping, but you could do whipped cream, a ganache, or just go naked.