Cheesecake Squares Recipe
This is an easy way to make a fancy, formal dessert in a hurry. A cream cake is a denser cake, usually with pudding in the mix, not quite as dense as a pound cake. The light, fluffy mixes found in store don’t work too well; the filling drops right through the batter in the oven. I take a short cut and buy the mixes from THE PREPARED PANTRY, one of my affiliates. The links below will take you to their site.
1 Fudgy Baby Cakes Cake Mix, Vanilla Bean Baby Cake Mix, or other cream cake mix
about one pound of prepared cream cheese filling
about one pound cherry or raspberry pastry filling or other filling
1/2 cup prepared streusel
string icing or powdered sugar frosting
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Mix cake batter in a stand type mixer, per package instructions. Scrape the batter into a well-greased or parchment lined 10×15-inch pan. (a large baking pan, one size larger than a 9 x 13-inch pan or a medium baking sheet. A 14-inch pizza pan has the same area if you would prefer to make your bars pie-shaped.)
- Cut a 1/4 to 3/8-inch corner off a pack of cream cheese filling. Squeeze diagonal lines of filling across the cake batter about 3/4-inch apart. Repeat going the other direction with either the raspberry or cherry filling. You should use about 1/2 of both the cream cheese filling and the cherry or raspberry filling. You will have a pretty crisscross pattern on the batter.
- Sprinkle the streusel across the cake in horizontal strips about an inch or so apart across the batter. The streusel will be sparse but is an attractive touch. If you do not have premade streusel, you can make your own from the recipe of your choice. Most streusels are made with flour, sugar, and butter mixed together with a pastry knife or fork.
- Bake for about 27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Place the cake in the pan on a wire rack to cool. If you are using parchment paper, grasp the edges of the paper and lift the cake to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Drizzle icing across the cake. You may make your own icing with powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. If you make your own frosting, scrape it into a small zipper-type bag or a small pastry bag, clip the corner or tip, and squeeze to drizzle the icing across the cake.
- The Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake Squares were made with a Fudgy Baby Cakes
Mix. Instead of making the cakes in a 9 x 13-inch pan, make them in a
10 x 15-inch pan, so they are thinner. You can squeeze diagonal lines of
raspberry pastry filling in one direction and cream cheese pastry filling the
other direction across the batter. The lines bake into the cake, giving
it an attractive quilted appearance. You can then drizzle a white glaze over the
cake. It’s quicker to make these cakes than it is to frost a sheet cake.
