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The Batter Thickens

A food blog balancing sweet treats & healthy eats.

Apple Butter Cheesecake Crumble Bars

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Apple butter is going to be the name of the game here for a few posts. I hope you’re all okay with that. It’s an obsession of mine and I’ve been feeling inspired to use it in a few ways. For this recipe, I was thinking it might pair well with some of the miso caramel I still had leftover from these cupcakes. So I found this recipe (from Table for Two), and then thought… I also have some leftover cream cheese? So why not use that too? So then these Apple Butter Cheesecake Crumble Bars took shape.

I feel like sometimes explaining my process of getting to a recipe comes off as justifying it. But I’m mainly just trying to document how the ideas connect to get to a final result. For my own documentation, really. This is a baking diary after all!!

I kind of like this style of bar. It’s very much like a fruit crumble, but it just has the apple butter. It would probably be excellent with a pumpkin butter as well. But it captures that fruit crumble feel and feels so much simpler. No chopping required!

I think these would also be excellent served with whipped cream or ice cream. Spoiler for my family: I’m going to freeze these and bring them to our Thanksgiving in two weeks, so we should maybe have some ice cream or whipped cream on hand. 😉

I took a look on the blog to see what apple butter recipes we have, and there’s quite a few! I was going to make a joke about being an apple butter evangelist, but… I made that joke already when I was 15. On a very similar recipe:

“If apple butter were a religion, I would feed you these Apple Butter Cheesecake Bars to make you convert to apple butter-ism.”

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Apple Butter Cheesecake Crumble Bars

  • Author: Audrey
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Description

Adapted from Table for Two and Amy in the Kitchen

Ingredients

Cheesecake filling

  • 4 oz. cream cheese room temperature
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream room temperature
  • 1/4 cup yogurt or sour cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp flour

Crumble

  • 1 ½ cups (188 g) all purpose flour
  • 1 ½ cups (122 g) rolled oats
  • 1 cup (220 g) dark brown sugar
  • ¾ cup (170 g) unsalted butter, cut into 7 or 8 chunks/cubes
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Fillings

  • 8 ounces (227 g) apple butter
  • ⅓ cup salted caramel sauce (homemade or store-bought)

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F and line a 8×8-inch baking pan with parchment paper, or grease with vegetable oil. Set aside.
  2. Make the cheesecake filling: Using a stand mixer or electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar together on low speed until there are no lumps and the mixture is smooth. Add the remaining ingredients and beat on low speed until they are fully incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed. Then, set aside.
  3. Make the bars: In a medium bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, and butter, and mix with your hands or a fork until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
  4. Set aside about 1 1/2 cups of the crumb mixture. Pour remaining crumb mixture to the bottom of the prepared pan and spread evenly. Press the crumb mixture down.
  5. Using an offset spatula, spread the apple butter in an even coat on top of the crumb crust. Then dollop on the cheesecake filling, and spread it around as much as you can without disturbing the apple butter too much. Then, drizzle the salted caramel sauce on top.
  6. Finally, crumble the reserved crumb mixture on top of the filling.
  7. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely on the counter before refrigerating, then slice into squares.

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