Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars

The Golden Globe Awards are my version of Superbowl Sunday. They are clearly the best awards show because they cover movies and TV shows, and you have a lot of  drunk celebs in attendance (“Who’s Natalie?!?!”). Kristine, Nicole and I have been watching together for the past few years, because it’s no fun to yell at the TV by yourself when Renee Zellweger shows up in a heinous Carolina Herrera like she did in 2009.

Anyway, here is what we ate for dinner this year:

• Barefoot Contessa’s Turkey Lasagna (with Goat Cheese!) (I just use ground turkey instead of turkey sausage – still delish)
• Smitten Kitchen’s Caesar Salad with homemade dressing and because I had time, homemade croutons too.

For dessert I finally made the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars from Bake or Break, which is the recipe that introduced me to food blogs in the first place. Don’t ask me why it took me so long to make these, but I’m so glad I finally did.

I had some structural issues with these bars – mainly that the cookie dough portion did not want to form nice little balls for me like on Bake or Break. Instead, I just crumbled the cookie dough over the cheesecake base. I also decided to leave out the chocolate drizzle on top, kind of overkill in my opinion. Lastly, I also liked these better cold from the fridge – at room temp they were a little too soft for me. Everyone took one home for a treat for lunch the next day and I think we all ate them prior to 10am. Nice.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars

Source: Adapted slightly from www.bakeorbreak.com

Ingredients:

Crust

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

5 tbsp butter, melted

2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Cheesecake Layer

8 oz. cream cheese (1 pkg), room temperature*

1/4 cup sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

Cookie Dough

5 tbsp butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

3 tbsp sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup flour

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325. Butter or spray a 9″ square baking pan. Mix graham cracker crumbs with butter until crumbs are moistened, and stir in chocolate chips.  Press into bottom of pan and one inch up the sides. Bake for 6 minutes. Let cool on wire rack while you prepare cheesecake layer.
2. For cheesecake layer, beat all ingredients until smooth. Pour into crust.
3. For cookie dough, mix butter, sugars, salt and vanilla until smooth. Stir in flour until just incorporated, and then stir in chocolate chips.
4. Crumble cookie dough mixture over cheesecake layer. (Note: Original recipe says to drop cookie dough by teaspoonfuls over top of the cheesecake layer, but this was an epic FAIL for me, so I crumbled it instead).
5. Bake for 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan, then cut into squares.

*The original recipe calls for 10oz of cream cheese, but as one block = 8oz, I didn’t feel like buying a extra block. Where am I going to find a recipe that calls for 6oz of cream cheese? I’m sure it didn’t really make a difference.