Easy Crème Brûlée Cheesecake Bars with a Sugar Cookie Crust
One of my favorite desserts is Crème Brûlée, and these easy bars taste like crème brûlée met a cheesecake on the way to the oven. There is a sugar cookie crust that is thick, chewy, and it’s a great contrast to the velvety smooth crème brûlée-cheesecake filling. The toffee bits on top melt slightly and create that signature sheen that you typically see on crème brûlée. The bars are thick, rich, decadent, and a small piece is probably all you’ll need.
Ingredients for Crème Brûlée Cheesecake Bars
I don’t mind using a few shortcuts now and then when baking — especially when it comes to cheesecake-anything, which are typically recipes that are too time consuming for busy weeknights. The crust for the bars starts out with a couple baking shortcuts including a packet of sugar cookie mix and instant French vanilla pudding. From there, the cheesecake filling is homemade! Sugar Cookie Crust
Sugar cookie mixInstant French vanilla pudding mixUnsalted butterEggLight brown sugarVanilla extract
Cheesecake Filling
Cream cheeseEggsSour creamGranulated sugarVanilla extractToffee Bits
Can the Ingredient Shortcuts Be Substituted?
If you don’t have vanilla pudding mix or sugar cookie mix in your area, I’m sure you can improvise and make a different crust. As a jumping off point — and I haven’t tested this, FYI — I would make a 1.5x-batch of this Samoas Cookie Pie crust, and don’t prebake it.
How to Make Crème Brûlée Cheesecake Bars
These cheesecake bars are a cinch to prepare! Follow these easy steps:
Baking Time Adjustments
I ever so slightly adapted this recipe from this site and while they suggest a baking time of 30 to 35 minutes, the center of my cream cheese layer was still far too loose and jiggly and I needed to bake for 45 minutes. I suggest starting to check at 30 minutes just in case your bars bake much quicker. As with anything and everything you bake, bake until it’s done, in your oven, with your pan, ingredients, climate, and to your liking. Use the baking times listed only as guidelines and watch your item and not the clock. The bars do firm up a bit after cooling at room temp and then chilling in the fridge.
Make-Ahead Instructions
Because the bars need to chill for about 3 hours in the fridge (I chilled overnight), they’re a great make ahead dessert. Serving them well chilled is definitely the way to go. You can easily make this recipe 24-48 hours in advance and they will hold up just fine.
Tips for Making These Cheesecake Bars
Room temp ingredients: A huge tip here is to make sure your cream cheese is at room temperature and very soft. If it’s not, when you try to beat the ingredients together, small ‘blobs’ of cream cheese will remain because it’s too cold to emulsify with the eggs and you’ll have a very lumpy and unappetizing looking batter. Toffee bits: I used the Heath brand of toffee bits. They melted well atop the warm crème brûlée cheesecake bars. Chill time: The bars MUST chill in the fridge for a few hours before being sliced. They firm up more in the fridge.
More Cheesecake Bar Recipes:
Death by Chocolate No-Bake Cheesecake Bars — Only for serious chocoholics because they’re rich, creamy, decadent, and loaded with chocolate!! NO-BAKE and an easy MAKE-AHEAD dessert!! Tried this recipe? Leave a review! Consider leaving a 5 star rating if you’ve made and loved one of my recipes! Salted Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars – Easy, one-bowl cheesecake bars with wonderful caramel apple flavor! Strawberry Cheesecake Bars – Soft, buttery bars topped with cheesecake and swirled with strawberry jam! The best of all worlds in these fast, easy, and AMAZING bars!! Butterscotch Cheesecake Bars — A super chewy crust made with butterscotch chips and graham cracker crumbs that also doubles as the topping!! The silky smooth tangy cheesecake layer is the PERFECT contrast! Caramel Apple Cheesecake Crumble Bars — These caramel apple cheesecake bars feature a buttery crust that’s topped with cheesecake and spiced apples. After they’re done baking, the bars are drizzled with salted caramel sauce! Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars — These bars are a texture lover’s dream with a crisp brown sugar-graham cracker crust, a soft yet dense pumpkin cheesecake layer, and gooey soft salted caramel swirls the run like a river over the surface.
