Cream Cheese Bars

It is holiday party season - a time of year I always love and that is often over too quickly.  This year, though, I am a little less in the holiday spirit and much more in the can't-wait-for-baby-to-be-here frame of mind.  At 37 weeks pregnant (and with a sinus infection that has suddenly overtaken my body), cooking for, attending and overall enjoying holiday parties isn't as easy as it should be.

This Friday is my work holiday party - an informal gathering for food and fun.  About a month ago, I signed up to make a dessert for the party.  Originally I was thinking of making something that everyone would ooo-and-aahh over, but as my pregnancy progressed I realized that an imaginative and luscious creation would be no small endeavor.  And so, with little energy and a belly full of baby, I decided to go with a family favorite - Auntie Donna's cream cheese bars.

Cream cheese bars have been a Christmas staple for my family for as long as I can remember.  Every Christmas Eve, Auntie Donna hosts a party with some of my favorite foods - Portuguese cacoila and crockpot chicken wings come immediately to mind.  The star of the show, though, is the cream cheese bars.  Knowing how much my mom, my sister and I love these bars, Auntie Donna always keeps a tupperware of them in the fridge, that no one else knows about, for us to take home.  Then, on Christmas morning, once we've opened our presents, we indulge with a little bite of cookie and cream cheese happiness.

These little gems are incredibly easy to make and literally everyone who has tasted them has fallen in love.  Simply two layers of cookie with a cream cheese-based center with only 5 ingredients. A delectable, super easy to make, melt in your mouth treat.

2 packages (rolls) of Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough

2, 8 oz. packages of cream cheese, softened

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

A couple of notes:

You could use any brand of refrigerated cookie dough, I suppose you could even make your own.  However, I have tried it with the Nestle brand of cookie dough and I just don't think it comes out as good.  

I always buy a third roll of cookie dough just in case.  If you don't cut the cookie dough rolls thin enough, or your pan is a little big, you may run out of dough.  This time I actually used only the two rolls, but this was the first time that has happened and I've made these bars a lot.

The cream cheese really needs to be room temperature to create the desired consistency for the filling.  I took my cream cheese out about an hour before I intended to start the bars, but it still wasn't ready by the time I wanted to begin.  To hasten the process, I set the oven to preheat and rested the cream cheese on the oven so that the heat would soften the cream cheese while I started the bars.  It seemed to do the trick.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray.  Our first step is to create a layer of cookie on the bottom of the pan.  Open one roll of cookie dough and lay on a cutting board.  Using a serrated knife, cut the long into pieces that are about a 1/4" thick.

If your cookie dough is really cold, it may stay as a nice circle of dough which you can easily place into the bottom of the pan.  If it isn't that cold, like mine was today, it'll crumble into pieces as you cut it.  Either way, the end product will come out looking (and tasting) about the same.

Next, lay the cookie dough in the pan.  Don't worry about filling all the gaps between the cookie pieces. When the bars bake, all the holes will fill in, and the cream cheese filling will be too thick to leak into the gaps.

3.  For the filing, combine the cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla in a mixer bowl.

Cream the ingredients until somewhat smooth.  How long it takes will depend on how soft your cream cheese is when you begin.  The goal is to get a thick, creamy mixture that will spread easily onto the cookie dough layer.  After the first minute of mixing, especially if your cream cheese isn't soft enough (as mine usually is), you'll have to scrape the cream cheese from the mixer.

The creamed filling can be a little lumpy, as long as the lumps are small.  If the lumps are too large, some bites will taste like plain cream cheese, not like the sweetened, delicious mixture you intended.  It should look something like the image below.

4.  Spread the mixture over the cookie dough layer in the pan.

When spreading, be as gentle as possible so that you don't pull up the cookie pieces as you move the mixture around.  There should be plenty of mixture to cover the whole pan.

5.  Cut up the second roll of cookie dough and spread over the cream cheese mixture.

6.  Bake the bars in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the top cookie layer is golden brown.  Cool completely in the pan.

Once cooled, the bars can be cut into any size you'd like.  To cut, use a sharp knife.  The first one you take out usually falls apart (that is the one I eat).  Once cut, the rest should come out easily with a fork.

The bars are very rich, so small, bite size bars are usually enough (and of course, people can go back for seconds).  One pan can yield a whole lot of delicious goodness.  I cut mine pretty small - this one pan yielded all of these (plus the couple that I ate as I was taking them out of the pan).  The platter will come with me to the party on Friday night and I'm sure the plate will be gone well before then!

Cream cheese bars are best served room temperature or even cold.  The colder the bar, the more rich the filling feels in the mouth.  What adorable little beauties.

This one is yet another 5 on the Husband's Rating Scale.  I promise, everyone is going to love these.