Berry Lemon Cheesecake Bars

I had bought a couple of lemons recently and still had one lemon that I wanted to use. It was starting to show its age so I went looking for recipes, hopefully something where I had all of the necessary ingredients. Since I try to keep cream cheese on hand, this helps a lot! I found these lemon cheesecake bars, which were perfect. The original recipe called for strawberry preserves, which I didn’t have, but I figured I could find something.

Our kitchen is stocked with quite a variety of preserves, which I think I have mentioned before. I knew we would have something that would work with lemon. While some of the flavors we had on hand didn’t combine well with lemon, I ended up finding some preserves that were a combination of blueberry and blackberry. Blueberry and lemon are classic together, and the blackberry would be even a little bit better.

These bars take a little bit longer because there are several steps. I made my crust in the mixer, but I could have also used my food processor. That does a better job of making pastry, but the mixer was fine. The mixer bowl was quite clean so I just used that for the filling as well. These bars are excellent with the blueberry/blackberry preserves! The only challenge was cutting the bars when they were very cold, which was nearly impossible! Once I let the bars sit at room temperature for a short time they were much easier to work with!

Berry Lemon Cheesecake Bars
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3/4 cup cold butter, cut into tablespoon sized pieces
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup berry preserves

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the flour, powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon zest and butter. Mix on low until the mixture is crumbly. (You could also use your food processor for this.) The mixture will be dry. Press the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.  

Bake for 20 minutes, until the crust begins to brown.

While the crust is baking, make the filling: in a large mixer bowl beat the cream cheese, sugar, and lemon zest on medium until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring until combined. Stir in the lemon juice.

Once the crust comes out of the oven, carefully spread the preserves in an even layer over the crust. Pour the cream cheese mixture over the preserves and smooth the top.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cheesecake is set in the center. Cool on a wire rack for 1 hour before refrigerating for several hours. Bring the bars to room temperature for about 30 minutes before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Cookies and Cups

Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake. Super decadent! I knew that the two of us didn’t need an entire cheesecake, so I halved this recipe and made two smaller 4” cheesecakes. You can find the recipe for this cheesecake online, and when I was searching online, I found quite a few variations. Make sure you check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to check out all the posts from this week’s bakers.

This cheesecake combines cream cheese, mascarpone cheese, eggs, chocolate, so not a super complex combination. Mascarpone is not an ingredient that I use frequently, mainly because it is so expensive. I went to a couple of stores and the first store the mascarpone was $$$. Luckily it was cheaper at the other store. This mixed up with no problem, and I had a little more batter than I needed, but I knew better than to over fill the pan. Mine baked in 30 minutes because the pans were so small.

I bought cookies to make crumbs for the base, but I didn’t end up using them. My cheesecake stuck to the bottom of the pan a bit, another reason I didn’t use the cookie crumbs on the bottom. My husband and I split one for dessert, and it was very good. They are very rich and even half of the small one was a lot. The bitterness of the dark chocolate comes through, and the cheesecake isn’t super sweet. I liked this quite a bit, even though cheesecake isn’t my favorite dessert, but let’s be honest, I won’t turn away any dessert! I’m glad I made this one.

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 256-258.

Chocolate Beer Cheesecake

I thought that this would be a good cheesecake to post in the week running up to St. Patrick’s Day! Who doesn’t love cheesecake? And beer is also a winner, so together they make for a very interesting, grown up dessert. My husband sometimes sends me recipes, some baking things and some dinner ideas. I imagine you are not surprised that this is a recipe my husband found! My husband, also a baker, years ago had made a beer cheesecake that he still talks about. This is a different recipe but I knew that had been such a positive experience that I was excited to try this.

The site where this is from, The Beeroness, explains at length how to select the right beer for this cheesecake. I don’t like bitter beer, so I’m not very familiar with the chocolate stout options for this cheesecake. My husband already knew what beer he wanted to use, and we picked up Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, which is a beer from the UK. My husband said that it was a good drinking beer, but I’ll have to take his word for it as I’m not really a stout fan.

I don’t make cheesecakes very often, but I think this one turned out really well and it cuts beautifully. The crust has a nice saltiness to it from the pretzels. My pan was a little small so I didn’t use all of the batter, and I put it on a baking sheet to catch any potential drips. I’d never baked the sour cream topping on, so that was interesting. I tasted this after about 7 hours of refrigeration and I didn’t really like it. It didn’t have a distinct flavor. The next day, I really liked it. It needed the time for the flavors to come together. This has a good chocolate flavor, a subtle beer flavor, and isn’t too sweet.

Chocolate Beer Cheesecake

4 rectangular graham crackers

1 cup pretzels

2 tablespoons brown sugar

3 tablespoons butter, melted

7 ounces dark chocolate

1 cup chocolate stout

24 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 tablespoon flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/2 salt

1 tablespoon espresso powder

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons chocolate stout

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9” springform pan.

In a food processor, process the graham crackers, pretzels, and brown sugar and the pretzels until crumbly. Add the melted butter and process the mixture until the mixture looks like wet sand. Press into the bottom of the prepared springform pan. 

In a small saucepan over medium high heat, combine the beer and the chocolate. Stir until melted and remove from heat; allow to cool.

In a large mixer bowl, add the cream cheese and sugar and mix until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing for one minute after each addition. Stir in the chocolate/stout mixer. Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and espresso powder, stir on low speed until just combined. Pour the batter over the crust.

Place the cheesecake on the middle rack of the oven. Place a baking dish filled with water on the rack below the cheesecake. (Alternatively, bake the cheesecake in a water bath: wrap the springform pan in foil and place in a large roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with hot water until it comes half way up the side of the spring form pan. I don’t do this as my cheesecake always gets soggy.)

Bake the cheesecake until the center no longer jiggles when you shake the rack, about 45-55 minutes. Remove from oven. 

In a small bowl whisk together the shrimp, powdered sugar, and chocolate stout. Pour over the cheesecake and bake for 8-10 more minutes, until set. Remove the cheesecake from the oven and cool at room temperature for 30 minutes. Refrigerate before serving, at least 3 hours, or longer (to allow the flavors to meld).

Remove the sides of the springform pan and cut the cheesecake with a knife dipped in hot water (and dried).

Recipe from The Beeroness

Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars

I hadn’t made anything with Nutella lately, and it’s about time! My supply of Nutella was dangerously low and there’s only so many things that you can make with a small amount of Nutella. And since I seem to be completely unable to remember to pick up the jumbo size Nutella at Costco, I’ve been stuck with the half jar I had in the cupboard.

This recipe calls for just 1/4 cup Nutella, but I didn’t really measure it. I’m pretty sure I used a little more than that, but it was fairly close. It’s surprising that the recipe uses so few ingredients. It seems like when I look at cheesecake bar cookies they always have tons of ingredients. This has a simple graham cracker crust and the filling is quite simple. I warmed the Nutella in the microwave for 30 seconds to make it easier to swirl in. 

These looked great coming out of the oven, and the only downfall that I can think of is that they are fairly tricky to cut. I refrigerated them for several hours, so I don’t think that was the issue. I think I baked them the right amount of time; maybe these are just kind of sticky! The flavor in these is just wonderful, with the Nutella flavor comes through nicely. Very tasty!

Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars

1-1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup Nutella

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9″x 13″ baking pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, flour, and brown sugar. Press into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake 10 minutes or until set.

While the crust bakes, make the cheesecake filling. In a large mixer bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Mix in eggs and vanilla.

Spread the filling evenly over the crust. Spoon the Nutella in drops randomly across the top of the cream cheese filling. Using a knife, swirl Nutella into the filling.

Bake for 20-22 minutes, until filling is just set. Cool for an hour and then refrigerate until completely chilled. Using a knife dipped in hot water, cut into bars. Refrigerate.

Recipe from Bake or Break