Strawberry Cheesecake Bars

I found this recipe in The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion cookbook. The King Arthur Flour Company was founded in 1790 and their cookbook presents over 100 cookie recipes, ranging from oatmeal cookies to monster cookies and whoopie pies. There are lots of great photographs and wonderful hand-drawn illustrations to draw in the ‘potential baker’.

This cookbook points out that Americans are the biggest producers and consumers of cookies on earth. This is so true, as cookies seem to be the first things we reach for when we get the ‘munchies’ or the first thing we remember reaching for when we were very young. (When my son was a toddler, I remember him leading me to the pantry and demanding I hand him his favorite ‘kay-co.’)

I was especially attracted to this recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake Bars because of the attractive design on top- plus the fact that I love cheesecake!

Here’s the method for making these bars- requires about 35 minutes total for baking, plus an extra few hours for the bars to firm up in the fridge.

Step 1: To make the crust, blend together the butter and flour until it resembles coarse sand, then add the sugar, baking powder and ground pecans.

Press the mixture into the bottom of a rectangular pan, then bake for 12-15 minutes until firm:

Step 2: Spread the cheesecake mixture on top of the pre-baked crust, then pipe three lines (or more) of strawberry jam horizontally across the pan.

(Special tip: make sure your strawberry jam is rid of any lumps before piping the lines onto the cheesecake):

Then use the tip of a knife to draw vertical lines through the lines of jam, spacing the lines one inch apart. Reverse the direction of the lines with each pass:

Final Step: Bake at 350 F. for approximately 20 minutes, let cool, then chill in the fridge for several hours and slice into bars.