RASPBERRY (BLUEBERRY) CHEESECAKE STREUSEL SQUARES, p. 94
I made a half recipe of these in an 8-inch square pan with blueberries in place of raspberries, along with a few other little tweaks detailed below, and it’s a good thing: it would be easy to eat way too many if I made the full recipe, because they are FANTASTIC!
My first deviation (other than using blueberries) was to brown the butter, because why would you not? I also reduced the sugar by 25% in both the streusel and cheesecake filling (which is perfect to my taste, but I don’t care for things super sweet) and increased the berries by 25%. After I made the streusel mixture and separated a third for the topping (but before I added the rolled oats to the topping portion) I decided that using only two-thirds for the base might render it a little thin, so I used it all on the bottom and made another third amount (or so) for the topping. I don’t know whether I’d have found the base too thin as written, but I don’t regret increasing it at all; it’s crisp, shortbread-y goodness. I don’t have blueberry jam, so I used Ginger People ginger spread because it was open in my fridge. I don’t think the jam choice is a big deal given it’s a pretty small amount and the flavor doesn’t come through much in the scheme of things.
If you’re a fan of cheesecake and berries, you should make these! And regardless of whether you pay attention to my other tweaks, I’d encourage you to brown the butter. I’m sure these would be plenty nice with raspberries, but I happen to find blueberries really shine in this application. I think blackberries would also be wonderful, as would sour cherries, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in sour cherry territory.
The recipe is online here.
