When life hands you lemons...

Make Lemon-Cheesecake Bars!!! Actually, as stated in the last post, things here are going really well, but I did have some lemons that needed to be used, and I had a craving for cheesecake so this is what I came up with. I sort of combined a few different recipes I found online to make this one. I knew I didn't want to use a graham cracker crust because I wanted the shortbread crust like you would find in a traditional lemon bar. For the cheesecake layer I used THIS recipe from Martha Stewart. It's very good, and super creamy, just the way I like it. The only change I made was I used one block of regular cream cheese, and my other block was the low-fat kind because that is all I had. Still, it turned out wonderful!! I'll post the shortbread recipe below. But first just take a look at these!!

Shortbread Crust Recipe

1 stick butter, softened
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour

To make crust: Pre-heat oven to 325 F. Cream butter and sugar in medium sized bowl. Add flour and vanilla and mix until well blended.
Press dough evenly onto the bottom of an 8"x8" baking pan. Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes. (I think I only did like 15 but they turned out fine.)
Prick shortbread crust with a fork and bake for 20-25 minutes or until pastry turns a golden brown. (I think in my oven it was more like 27-30)

When this part was done I just poured the cheesecake on and stuck it back in the oven. Worked great! Also, in my oven the cooking time for the cheesecake was about 5-10 min longer than in Martha's recipe.

ENJOY!