White Chocolate Cheesecake Butter Bars

It can be tricky naming or re-naming a dessert and I have decided that something with a long name must be good!  I found this recipe and quickly realized that the title it had didn't seem to do it justice.  Everyone who has read my postings know how I love cheesecake and these bars essentially have a cheesecake layer that wasn't getting any recognition in the title, such a shame!  These tasty little numbers are really quite easy and are so very yummy!

While I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate, I still have this love of vanilla.  For a cake mix, this translate to the yellow cake mix so the fact that this crust is primarily a yellow cake mix makes for a great start!  You will mix the cake mix with some butter, slightly softened and 1 egg.  I started out by using my pastry blender,

Then just decided to use my hands to really get the butter and egg to combine with the cake mix. 

Once it formed a thick dough, I kinda pulled the dough out (should have left it in the bowl!) sprayed the cake pan and pressed the dough to form the bottom crust.

Once that was done I sprinkled the white chips over the crust.

Next was the filling of cream cheese, powdered sugar, the rest of the eggs and some vanilla.  This is pretty much a basic cheesecake here so once that was all blended together nicely I poured that on top of the chocolate chip layer.

Next it is time to bake it.  Since this has a cheesecake layer I decided to go ahead and do a water bath, to make sure the layer didn't crack at all.

It bakes for 20-30 minutes, or until the center is set.  I was nervous about over baking this one so I kept a careful eye on it and took it out at the 30 minute mark.

You can see that the edges are lightly browned.  Next it needs to be sprinkled with powdered sugar.  For me, trying to sprinkle a fair amount of powdered sugar is never easy.  It seems to stick together and when I try to gently shake it loose, I get large amounts of the sugar that just seem to burst out!  I found this little handy sifting too to help with just such tasks.

Keeps the big clumps out as well.  Once the dessert  has a nice thick layer of powdered sugar, try very hard to resist the urge to cut into this right away!

 Like any cheesecake you need to let it set up for a bit.  Now, I did let it set up for a bit so it was at room temperature when I tried it and it was so good!  I stored it in the fridge and tasted good cold, but I think it is meant to be enjoyed at room temperature or even warmed up for 10 seconds.

Give these a try and enjoy!

White Chocolate Cheesecake Butter Bars

Ingredients

1/2 cup cold butter
1 box yellow cake mix
3 eggs, divided
1, 8 oz block of cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325.  Spray a 9x13" pan with cooking spray
2. In your mixing bowl combine the butter and cake mix. Mix until the cake mix looks crumbly.
3. Add egg and beat until smooth. Batter will be stiff. May need to use your hands at this point.  Press your mixture into your prepared pan.
4. Sprinkle the white chocolate chips evenly over batter.
5. In another mixing bowl, beat together cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.
6. Pour this evenly over white chocolate chips and spread to edges of pan.
Bake for approx 30 minutes until center is set. Remove from oven and dust with powdered sugar.
Let cool before cutting into squares.

Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake

As I have stated, I love making desserts.  I really love making desserts that don't actually require any baking at all.  Seems like baking something increases the chance of messing it up in some way, like the dessert that I baked and took to last week's family dinner.  I was excited to eat it and then blog about it, but, somewhere in the baking process something went awry and my pie was less than stellar!  So for this week I picked something that looked simple, practically fool proof and was a success! 

When you take Oreo's, cream cheese and cool whip, it is hard to create something that would be disappointing, unless you are a crazy fool who doesn't happen to like cream cheese of course!

Now for any of you that has ever made something with cream cheese and wondered why it had little lumps, the reason is that the cheese wasn't soft enough before you started mixing it up.  So make sure you can either leave the cream cheese out long enough to get to room temperature or soften it slowly in the microwave.  So while this is softening up you can work on the crust.  When I have to crush Oreo's, I have found the simplest method is to put them in a ziplock bag and toss that bag around and beat it up a bit. 

I ended up needing almost 20 or 2 rows of cookies to give me enough crumbs to cover the bottom of my 9x9 pan.  Mix the crumbs up with some melted butter to help it stick and a little bit of sugar before pressing into the bottom of the pan.  At this point, feel free to take a quick milk and cookies break, even if it is 10:00 on a Sunday morning, I won't judge!

Set that aside while you work on the filling.  Now this recipe had mousse in the title, just a little bit deceptive as the filling doesn't have eggs and isn't cooked at all but oh well, makes for a better title!

So, mix up your softened cream cheese and sugar until it is nice and smooth.

Gently mix in the cocoa next, since cocoa powder is so fine, it can tend to get all over! 

Next you will mix in the cool whip.  I ended up using about 9 ounces, next time though, I think I may increase the cocoa powder and the cool whip to a full 12 ounces.  I like my fillings very thick!  Once everything is mixed in, carefully spread on the crust, being careful not to pull it up as you spread.

Cover and refrigerate for about 3 hours.  Originally I was going to leave it as is, with a cookie garnish of course.  But during the interim of I decided that I wanted to use the little bit of cool whip that I had left to add one more layer.  Shortly before serving I spread the remaining cool whip on top and topped it with approx 4 cookies crumbled up.

After seeing how it turned out

and tasting the different layers I am really glad I added that final layer!

This is easy enough, very delicious and just different enough than other desserts I have made I will be making this one again!


Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup crushed oreo cookies
1/8 cup sugar
3 Tbls cup melted butter
12 oz. (1 1/2 8-oz. pkgs) cream cheese (softened)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tbs vanilla
1/4 cup cocoa
1 16-oz. carton whipped topping, divided
Oreo cookie crumbs (topping)

Directions
1. Mix oreo crumbs, 1/8 cup sugar and 1/4 cup melted butter. Pack into a 9x9 dish.
2. In large bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla thoroughly.  When lumps are gone, beat in cocoa.
3. Fold in 12 ounces of whipped topping, just until mixed, on low speed.
4. Fill crust, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours.  Right before serving spread remaining cool whip on top and sprinkle with cookie crumbs.