Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars -- Tyler Florence Fridays

For this week's edition of Tyler Florence Fridays I made Tyler's Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars . I've had my eye on this recipe for a while, I love lemon, blueberry, the lemon blueberry combo, and cheesecake! Roll all of those flavors into one and you have this delicious treat. While I did have the recipe bookmarked based on title alone, it was just last week when I actually read through the recipe and saw how easy it was -- it all comes together in the food processor, wow!

Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars

For the base:
Butter, for greasing (I just used cooking spray)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
9 graham crackers
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
2 lemons, zested and juiced
About 1/2 cup sugar, eyeball it
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

For the base: Grease the bottom of a 9 by 9-inch baking pan with butter. Then place parchment paper over the top, pressing down at the corners. In a food processor, process the sugar, cinnamon and graham crackers until you have the texture of bread crumbs.


Add the melted butter and pulse a couple of times to fully incorporate. (I just realized while posting these photos that I put the melted butter in before pulsing the crackers, cinnamon, and sugar and it worked out just fine.)

Pour into the lined baking pan and gently pat down with the base of a glass.

Bake in the oven for 12 minutes until golden. When done set aside to cool.

For the filling:

Add cream cheese, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar to the food processor and mix until well combined.

It should have a smooth consistency.

Pour onto the cooled base and then cover with blueberries.

They will sink slightly but should still be half exposed -- as the cake bakes they will sink a little more and break down.

Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the center only slightly jiggles. Remove from the oven and cool completely before refrigerating for at least 3 hours.

Once set, remove from pan using the parchment lining and slice into 10 rectangular bars. Dust with powdered sugar.


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Results and Changes: As you can see I went kind of overboard with the powdered sugar, I sprinkled a little too much over one spot, then had to do it to the rest of the bars to match :) No worries though, it ended up fading into the bars after a over-night in the refrigerator. Backtracking a bit, even after the cooling and 3 hour refrigeration these were not quite set enough...


The bar above is right after the 3 hour refrigeration, see what I mean, the bar below is after I put them back in the refrigerator and let them set over night, much better consistency.


I had noticed in the reviews on foodnetwork that most people loved these but some had problems with them not setting up, and I suppose if you planned to make them 5 hours before a party expecting them to be done they might be a little soft for some people, so my suggestion would be to make these the night before.

I really loved these, and so did my kids, my husband hates cheesecake (yes, you heard right, hates cheesecake, what a crazy guy I married) so he didn't even want to try these. Oh-well. They are not the sweetest cheesecake bar, which was fine with me but some people might want to up the sugar by 1/4 cup or so. I think these would be a lovely brunch dessert or addition to a party dessert buffet. If you are a lemon or blueberry fan you should give these a try for sure :)