Caramel Apple Cheesecake Cookie Bars with homemade Apple Cider Caramel Sauce

An over the top sweet fall treat filled with apples and cinnamon drizzled with apple cider flavored caramel on top of cheesecake and a crunchy buttery crust.

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Cookie Bars with homemade Apple Cider Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:
Dough:
1 cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter

Cream Cheese Filling:
2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
2 eggs

Apple Filling:
2 Large apples (firm)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp white sugar

Crumb Topping:
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (room temp)
1 cup all purpose flour

Apple Cider Caramel:
3/4 cup apple cider
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp maple syrup
3 Tbsp corn starch
1 tsp ginger powder
Dash or two of cinnamon
2 Tbsp lemon juice
pinch of salt (opt’l)
**You will only use about half of this for the Cheesecake bars, so half the recipe if you don't want any left overs, but trust me, you will.

Servings: One 9x13 pan or two 8x8 pans

Instructions:
Caramel Apple Cheesecake Cookie Bars

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C).

In a bowl, combine the flour (1 cup – 140 grams) and brown sugar (1/2 cup – 100 grams). Cut in the butter (1 cup – 230 grams) with a pastry blender (or a fork) until the mixture is crumbly, kinda. If your butter is closer to room temp, just toss all that together and cream it in the mixer, you will end up with the same thing. A gooey dough.

First with lightly floured fingertips, then with the bottom of a cup (or a glass), press the dough evenly into a 13 × 9-inch (33 x 22 cm) baking pan or a cookie sheet with edges. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned. It will look wet and under baked, you will think you have screwed up, it is fine.

In the meantime, in a larger bowl, beat the cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar until smooth (about 1 minute). Add the eggs, 1 at a time (beat about 20 seconds after each addition). Next add the vanilla and mix until combined.

Peel the apples and chop them into 1/2-inch chunks. Mix the apple chunks with the cinnamon and two tablespoons white sugar. Add a dash of pumpkin pie spice if your so inclined.

Pour the cream cheese batter over the warm crust. Spoon the apple chunks evenly over the cream cheese mixture. Or place them evenly over the cream cheese if your a bit anal about it like I was.

In a smaller bowl, combine the flour (1 cup – 140 grams), oats (1/2 cup – 60 grams), and brown sugar (1/2 cup – 100 grams) for crumb topping. Cube the butter (1/2 cup – 115 grams) and using a pastry blender (or a fork), create a crumbly mixture.

Crumble over the cream cheese mixture. Bake 30 minutes, or until the filling is set. Reduce the temperature to 300 °F (150 °C) for the last 5 minutes.

Cool these over night in the fridge. You might be able to cool them for 5 hours or so before slicing but they need to be cold in order to cut them! Drizzle with the Apple Cider Caramel sauce listed below when they are fully chilled. You can make the sauce the same day as the cheese cake and just rewarm prior to drizzling.

Apple Cider Caramel sauce

Dissolve the corn starch into the cold apple cider.

Add the cider/starch to a sauce pot with the other ingredients. Bring the mixture to a boil – stirring constantly. When the bubbling becomes intense, reduce to medium heat and continue stirring until the mixture thickens a bit. Remove from heat. Pour the sauce into a bowl

Recipe From: Caramel Apple Cheesecake Cookie Bars from ZoomYummy.com and Apple Cider Caramel Sauce from Family-kitchen

I think next time I want to try the crust with a 1/2 cup more flour. The whole thing had too much butter and was too wet in my opinion, when chilled this isn't a big problem but some of the butter had congealed on the bottom when I sliced them and I found that to be an indication of too much butter. I have seen other recipes for this call for 2 cups flour which I think would be fine but lead to a more dense crust. I think 1.5 might be perfect but I have not tried it yet.

The original recipe called for regular caramel sauce, with an implication of store bought. So not skip the apple cider caramel sauce. You will get so much more apple goodness out of this recipe. I think it takes it from food to wow. The apples are a bit faint without it, this brings them to the forefront.

This recipe is also very sweet and very buttery. It is not diet friendly. If you have someone who doesn't care for sweets, don't make this. You could possibly cut some or most sugar from the cheesecake layer since the caramel and streusel topping carry enough sugar to make up for it to cut down on an overly sweet taste. Better still would be to cut some from the caramel but tinkering with sugars in caramel gets complicated and might take some trial and error.

The left over cider syrup would be great on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, apples, crisps, crumbles, pumpkin cakes and breads... just about anything fall flavored!

Caramel Apple Cider Cookies Recipe

Super easy sweet fall treat. Strong apple cider taste with gooey or chewy caramel in the middle.

Caramel Apple Cider Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar**
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (7.4 ounce) box Alpine Spiced Apple Cider Instant Original Drink Mix (*not sugar free*)
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 (14 ounce) bag Kraft Caramels, unwrapped

**I used 3/4 of a cup, should have used 1/2 cup or none at all. The drink mix is sweet enough on its own!

Servings: ~45 cookies

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line cookie sheets with parchment or a silpat. (The melted caramel may stick to the bottom if you just use cooking spray on a plain baking sheet.)

In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. With an electric mixer, cream together butter, sugar, salt and all 10 packages of apple cider drink mix powder, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and mix well. Gradually add flour mixture to butter/egg mixture. Mix until just combined.

Scoop out cookie dough ball about the size of a walnut (about 2 tablespoons). Flatten the ball of dough slightly in the palm of your hand. Press the unwrapped caramel into the center of your dough and seal the dough around it, covering it completely. Shape the dough into a ball, and place on parchment covered cookie sheets about 3 inches apart.

Bake 12-14 minutes, or until very lightly browned around the edges. Once the cookies are done, carefully slide the parchment or silpat off of the baking sheet right out onto the counter. Allow cookies to partially cool on the parchment/silpat. When cookies are cool enough to be firm but still slightly warm, carefully twist off of parchment and allow to finish cooling upside down (either on the parchment/silpat or on a rack).

Recipe From: Gimmesomeoven.com

These were pretty quick and easy to whip up, however they also taste a little quick and easy to whip up. The drink mix doesn't "dissolve" in the cookie, which keeps the strong apple flavor going but leaves it all a little "fake". This recipe could do with a small bit of tinkering. Right now it tastes like a "box mix" but I think with some improvements it could be made awesome.

As it is now, kids will love it, adults will like it, health nuts will cringe. Eat these warm (but well cooled, molten caramel burns!) from the oven to get gooey caramel, eat these cold and get chewy caramel (but not in a bad way).

Baked Spiced Pumpkin Mini Doughnuts

Little pumpkin treats for breakfast! Moist, tasty and easy. If you don't have a mini doughnut pan, just use muffin cups and only fill them 1/4-1/3 full.

Ingredients:
For the doughnut holes:
220g all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
½ tsp ground gloves
Pinch of salt
1 egg
75ml vegetable oil
100g brown sugar
185g tinned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
120 ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the coating (optional):
130g granulated sugar
2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice

Servings: 48 mini doughnuts or 18-20 holes

Instructions:
Spray the mini doughnut pan or 18-20 holes in a muffin/cupcake tin (depends on whether the muffin tin is for normal-sized or huge muffins). Pre-heat the oven to 175°C.

Sift the flour, baking powder, spices and salt into a medium-sized bowl and mix together.

Lightly beat the egg in a large bowl (I actually used 2 small organic eggs), then add the oil, brown sugar, pumpkin, milk and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth. Gently mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined (like with muffins, don’t over-mix!).

Divide the batter between the muffin holes or moulds (don’t fill them too much – these will puff a little bit as they cook) and bake for 10-12 mins until a toothpick comes out clean.

If you cook these the night before, by morning they will be moist from all the pumpkin, you can just roll them in the sugar and it will stick. The original recipe has you dunk them in melted butter and then roll them. I thought the extra calories wouldn't add all that much and this method worked just fine for me. However you need to do this right before you serve these doughnuts or they will just absorb the sugar and wont look as cute.

Recipe From: Sharkyovengloves


These came out nice and moist and quite good. Honestly I would like to try some glazed and some with spiced pumpkin cream cheese. I think I will be later with some of the left overs. Before you toss these in sugar, I think they would even freeze well so you could make a big batch and then same some for later.

Quick and easy to make, tasty and over all healthy.