Easy Strawberry Cheesecake Bars are a semi-homemade sweet treat for all ages! A few store-bought ingredients and no cheesecake setting and baking involved.
You’ll rarely find a baking recipe on Mom to Mom Nutrition for a pretty simple reason: I don’t have the patience to bake. I don’t like following directions. Oh and I can eat a whole pan of brownies by myself. That’s 3 pretty good reasons if you ask me!
But, for Father’s Day, I decided to bake a special dessert for a special Dad in my life [here’s looking at you, Coach], I took this special someone’s favorite fruit and dessert, and created something semi-homemade: Easy Strawberry Cheesecake Bars.
INSPIRATION FOR EASY STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE BARS
When I was in college one of my roomies [and BFF’s to this day], Amy, would come back from holiday breaks with the BEST lemon bars courtesy of her mom. Come to find out, the bars were semi-homemade, and used a boxed cake mix as the base. Smart mom hack there! I found a similar recipe to Amy’s online from Belle of the Kitchen, and made a few substitutes to create a strawberry bar version. Ingredient swaps are as follows:
Belle of the Kitchen Easy Lemon Bar Recipe Substitutions:
- Use white cake mix vs. yellow cake mix
- Add 2 tablespoons of strawberry gelatin to the cake mix during the first mixing phase
- Use strawberry cream cheese vs. plain cream cheese
- Do not add lemon zest and juice
- Do not add granulated sugar
- Bake in a 8×8 baking dish [for all the same suggested cook times- I love chewy bars!]
- Top cooling with fresh strawberries and white chocolate chips
Ok. So follow Belle’s recipe, but make these ingredient swaps, and voila! You have my easy strawberry cheesecake bars.
