Cranberry Cheesecake Bars

These festive cranberry cheesecake bars are perfect for the holiday season! The cheesecake is silky smooth and so creamy. You will love the swirls of sweet tart homemade cranberry sauce.

Cranberry orange loaf cake makes for a yummy winter breakfast or brunch if you happen to have some extra cranberries on hand.

This recipe was first published on 11/18/2021.

I can never get enough of these cranberry cheesecake bars!

The original recipe was actually a full size cheesecake but making them as bars was just so much easier and perfect for a grab and go dessert.

It's a wonderful recipe for Thanksgiving or Christmas, just the sight of them is so cheery and festive with the bursts of bright cranberry red.

Making your own cranberry sauce is pretty easy. I like to use orange juice and maple syrup in my cranberry sauce.

Jump to:

• Graham Cracker Crust
• Cheesecake Tips
• Holiday Recipes
• Cranberry Cheesecake Bars

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It turns out so yummy! Those two ingredients really help to balance the tart cranberry flavor.

But the real show stopper is the creamy cheesecake. It is so light and airy.

And it wouldn't be complete without a buttery graham cracker crust. Not too buttery, just enough so your crust doesn't disintegrate when you cut the squares.

Graham Cracker Crust

To make the graham cracker crust you'll need graham crackers, butter and sugar.

You can actually buy graham cracker crumbs already crushed up.

But if you have graham crackers on hand you'll just need a blender or my preference is to use a mini food processor.

After you get your graham crackers turned into crumbs (a fine crumb) mix it with melted butter and sugar.

The trick is to add enough butter so that the crust stays together when you cut into your cheesecake bars. You also don't want to add too much butter that it's overly oily.

I've found that 5 tablespoons of melted butter to 1 ½ cups of graham cracker crumbs is perfect.

A tablespoon of sugar is all you need, since the cheesecake is sweet your crust doesn't need to be.

It's good measure to pre bake the crust prior to pouring in your filling. It gives it a chance to harden up. You'll want to bake it without a filling for 10 minutes.

Cheesecake Tips

For a really light and airy cheesecake here are some tips and tricks that may help you!

• Start with softened cream cheese, if it's too cold it will make your batter lumpy
• Beat together the cream cheese ingredients for a few minutes, without adding the eggs yet, this will get it nice and creamy
• Add each egg, one a a time, mix until combined then stop stirring
• Add an oven safe bowl of water to your oven, this will release steam in the oven and keep the cheesecake texture nice, reducing the risk of cracking
• Bake the cheesecake until it has just about set, with bars it doesn't matter quite as much as a traditional cheesecake, like this pumpkin swirl cheesecake
• Chill for 24 hours for the best flavor, if you just can't wait you can let the cheesecake bars come to room temperature and put them in a freezer for 1-2 hours this will have chilled them a fair amount (I toss mine in the deep freezer because I usually can't wait)

Holiday Recipes

• Spatchcock Turkey - an easy time saving turkey recipe
• Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake - a family favorite
• Thanksgiving Herb Stuffing - this homemade recipe is a a staple Thanksgiving side dish, made with fresh herbs and french bread
• Cloverleaf Buttery Herb Dinner Rolls - frozen rolls transformed into cloverleaf rolls, they are a focal point of the dinner table