Apple Crumble Cheesecake Bars

Wotchers!

Time for some indulgence and also a sort of Deja Food – bonus!

Remember back in the days of long ago November, I posted a recipe for Crunchy Oat Slice?

They were rather popular at the time, even earning a new name from one visitor of the blog – Jay, over at  Cake Box Leeds of JamJacks (which is a fab name, and one I might well steal, as soon as I can come up with a suitably cunning plan 😀 ).

ANYHOO…

Today’s recipe is the Jam Jacks’ slightly richer cousin – the Apple Crumble Cheesecake Slice! Same basic recipe as before, but instead of jam, we have additional creamy cheese and tart apple butter layers.

Still a tray bake, still ridiculously quick and easy to whip up, still full of healthy oats, with the added bonus of delicious apple…. Can you tell I’m just trying to put a positive healthy spin on this excuse to eat cheesecake in the morning?

I used apple butter (a kind of apple jam), but any fruit puree or spread will do. As with the Crunchy Oat Slice I prefer something with a bit of sharpness to contrast the creamy cheese and the crunchy oats.

There’s slightly more attention needed with the baking, but the results are well worth it!

To save you the bother of switching between pages, I’m going to shamelssly copy/paste from the Crunchy Oat Slice page and tweak the recipe to incorporate the changes.

NB You can use just half of the cheese filling if you’d like an extra dazzle on your halo 😉

Apple Crumble Cheesecake Bars

90g demerera sugar
125g wholemeal flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
125g butter
125g rolled oats

500g cream cheese
2tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
icing sugar to taste

250g fruit puree

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Grease a 20cm square cake tin or slice tin (my favourite tin has internal measurements of 20cmx25cm), and line with baking parchment.
• Put all the dry ingredients except the oats into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the butter is incorporated and the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs. Add the oats and pulse once or twice just to break them up slightly – you want to keep some texture in there.
• Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the prepared cake tin and press down firmly.
• Bake for 10 minutes until the base has firmed up and is slightly brown.
• While the base is baking, whisk the cream cheese, vanilla, and eggs together until smooth.
• Add icing sugar to taste – as a rough guide,  3 or 4 tablespoons should be enough, unless you want it to be extremely sweet.
• When the base has cooked for 10 minutes, remove the tin from the oven and pour over the cheese mixture.
• Return the tin to the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes until the surface has set.
• Remove the tin from the oven and spread over your fruit topping. Partially cooking the cheese filling makes it easier to spread the topping and keep it as a topping (rather than a ‘sinking’).
• Sprinkle over the rest of the oat mixture and pat down lightly with your fingertips.
• Return the tin to the oven for one final baking of 15 minutes, until the oat topping is a nice golden brown and there’s just a slight wobble to the cheese layer in the centre of the tin.
•  Allow to cool.
• Cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight in the fridge before eating the entire batch for breakfast cutting into bars.
• Keep (good luck with that! 😉 ) chilled.