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!