Reese’s Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bars

This week, I took an extra day off work and made these.  I highly recommend.  They are to.die.for.  Please, please, give them a whirl.  I picked the recipe up here: The Sweets Life.  Can you tell I'm on a cheesecake and peanut butter mode?  I could just whip these babies up weekly, but then I'd be ever fatter than I already am, yuck.  Anyway, onto the recipe! 

My actual results:


Reese's Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bars

Ingredients:

Crust- -7 whole graham crackers, broken into small pieces
-6 tbsp unsalted butter, melted & cooled
-3 tbsp brown sugar
-2 tbsp all-purpose flour
-1/8 tsp salt

Filling- -2 packages cream cheese, softened
-2/3 cup granulated sugar
-2 eggs
-1/4 cup sour cream
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 bag mini Reese's peanut butter cups, chopped
-2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 325F. Line an 8-in pan with aluminum foil, leaving a 3-4 inch overhang on each side. Grease foil.
2. Make graham cracker crust by adding crackers to food processor and pulsing until fine. Add butter, brown sugar, flour, and salt. Pulse until mixture is combined. Press into the bottom of the baking dish.
3. Bake crust for 12-15 minutes until browning. Cool for at least 30 minutes.
4. In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Slowly add sugar, beating well. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in sour cream and vanilla extract until fully combined.
5. After chopping Reese's peanut butter cups, set aside approximately 1/2 cup for later. Stir the remaining chopped candies into the cream cheese batter.
6. Pour batter into baking pan, spreading evenly over crust. Bake at 325F for 35-40 minutes (rotate halfway through), until the edges are set and middle still jiggles slightly.
7. Cool cheesecake for 2 hours. Cover and refrigerate 3-24 hours.
8. Remove from fridge and using the foil overhang, remove bars from pan. Cut into small squares. Melt bittersweet chocolate in the microwave (stirring every 15 seconds). Drizzle chocolate over bars and top with remaining chopped Reese's cups.

The only changes I made to this was in steps 7 & 8.

• I put these suckers in my deep freezer for 2 hours immediately after they came out of the oven.  This helped them easily pop out of the pan, and helped me be able to enjoy this bad boys at good quality that very night. 
• One more change I made.  I used milk chocolate chips, melted them and drizzled that on top instead of bittersweet.  I’m not a bittersweet chocolate fan.