Dress 'Em Up, Dress 'Em Down

These Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars made their first appearance at the party we call Wheat Harvest 2011.

But they would be just as much at home on a fancy assorted cookie tray.


I just love a versatile cookie recipe. And make it a bar cookie recipe and I'm even happier.

Mandy, my cousin's daughter, posted a photo of these bars on her Facebook page. And I was a click away from a new bar cookie to add to my repertoire. She got the recipe from Heat Oven to 350 , a cooking blog. Now that I've discovered that blog, I'll be heading back for other ideas.

These cookies have to be stored in the fridge because of the cream cheese filling, so you might not think they're a good option for the harvest field. But I tote the guys' meals to the field in insulated containers - a hot container for the hot stuff and a cooler for the cold supper items. So it's not a problem.

It's sometimes a challenge to find extra storage space in the fridge. But I think you'll find these cookies are worth making room for. Enjoy!

Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Chocolate Chip Layer:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup butter-flavored vegetable shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. cider vinegar
1 large egg
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups flour
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cheesecake Layer:
1 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, shortening and sugars. Add vanilla, salt and vinegar. Beat in the egg, then the baking soda and flour. Stir in the chocolate chips. Divide the dough into two equal parts and set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream the cream cheese with sugar until thoroughly combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla.

In a 9- by 13-inch pan, spread 1/2 of the cookie dough evenly across the bottom. (This is somewhat tricky to do. Heat Oven to 350 recommends adding dollops of cookie dough throughout the pan and then spread the dollops together. I used my metal spatula to spread it after dropping the dollops.)

Spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the cookie dough. With the remaining cookie dough, flatten chunks of dough between your hands into discs and place on top of the cream cheese mixture. (I found that the dough was too sticky to really flatten the dough with my fingers, so I tried to dollop it across the top and spread it as evenly as I could with the metal spatula.) The top dough pieces don't have to entirely cover the surface of the cream cheese layer. They will spread out some.

Bake at 350 for 35 to 45 minutes (mine didn't take quite that long) or until top is brown and cooked through. Cool completely and store in the refrigerator.

Note: I didn't have butter-flavored shortening, so I used regular shortening and added a little butter flavoring - probably 1/2 teaspoon or so.

Other Harvest Cookie Creations

I also made my basic cookie recipe and made four different varieties. This time, I made:

• Date Oatmeal cookies
• Chocolate Chip Pecan
• Coconut (I used flaked coconut. I used both Mounds coconut drops and coconut M & Ms - somehow, I had partial bags of both in the freezer.)
  
• & White Chocolate Macadamia

I packaged part of them in twos in sandwich bags, then I put them in the freezer. I can then just pull out the needed packages to take for suppertime at the field.

But you don't have to be a farm family to enjoy this cookie recipe. I always feel like I'm getting great production with my investment of time to divide the dough and get several different kinds of cookies with one baking session. Enjoy!