Blueberry Cheesecake Bites

Was trying to come up with ideas to get rid of my blueberries, and went for blueberry sauce. I thought about doing it on a roll cake but then we had the cream cheese in the fridge and so idea (!): blueberry bites.

The recipe is technically from Fannie Farmer's Baking Book, but we nixed the crust since it was super candy and went for a shortbread type we found in a church charity cook book that makes awesome lemon squares.

Blueberry Cheesecake Bites


makes 25 bites

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
1 cream cheese bar
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups blueberry sauce (canned or homemade)

Pull cream cheese out and let come to room temperature. (Or chop into little bits and microwave about 20-30 seconds if in a hurry)
Preheat oven to 350 F and pull out an 8x8" glass pan.
Cream butter and sugar together and stir in flour.
Press lightly into pan and bake about 12-15 minutes.
In a tall 4-cup measuring cup, mix cream cheese and sugar together with a stick blender.
Blitz in the egg, milk and vanilla and keep at mixture until really smooth.
Pour onto baked crust and bake about 25 minutes or until not jiggly anymore and you don't leave fingerprints when you touch it.
Cool about 15 minutes and cut the square with a sharp, clean knife. (Super important!!! The crust will be really, really hard to cut when fully cooled, especially if well-done!)
Top with blueberry sauce and carefully find your cut marks.
Serve cool and keep refrigerated.

Enjoy!

Blondies

My first time going at them. Some people out there in internet land call them the antithesis to brownies, but to me the recipe reads more like someone put chocolate chip cookie dough in a pan because they were too lazy to make the individual cookies. I mean, aside from having the split of white and brown sugar in cookies, that's basically it. I should have either mixed the sugars or cut back, since they were super intensely sweet, but were too finicky to cut smaller than into 16s.

Blondies


makes 16 or 25 squares, depending on your sweet tooth

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
1/3 cup toppings: choose from chocolate bits/chips, nuts, dried fruit, etc. (I went with chocolate bar bits.)

Preheat oven to 350 F and grease and flour an 8" x 8" pan.
In a bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until fluffy.
Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder and then gently stir into the batter.
Stir in your topping choice until just mixed.
Pour into prepared pan and smooth out.
Bake about 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool about 15 minutes and then score your squares to make the final cut when cool easier.
Serve.

For some reason the batter poofed up around the edges and stayed low in the center, so I got some weird little 3D action going on. The chocolate bits were yummy though.

Enjoy!