Gluten Free Blueberry Cheesecake Squares
These gluten free cheesecake squares topped with an irresistible blueberry topping are a crowd-pleasing favorite dessert everyone will love!
Some of my favorite recipes are simple twists on childhood favorites.
These Flourless Chocolate Chip Cookies are a perfect example. Sure, they’re all dolled up with ground flax and chia, but basically, they’re just an upgraded version of the yummy 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookie I remember making 20 years ago.
That’s the beauty of being unmillennial. I’ve got 40+ years’ worth of food memories to choose from when it comes to recipe development.
These Gluten Free Cheesecake Squares are also an updated twist on a dessert I remember my grandmother making when I was a kid.
My grandmother Lucille absolutely adored a good dessert. You hardly ever went to her house that she didn’t have some sort of cake or pie she’d cooked; or if you looked hard enough, a few candy bars — which may actually have been my Pawpaw’s — stashed away in her mushroom-shaped flour canisters. (If you know the ones I’m talking about, you are CLEARLY Unmillennial.)
I remember growing up Lucille would make a really simple “cheesecake-like,” concoction which was, as I recall it, nothing more than crushed vanilla wafers, cream cheese, Cool-Whip, and canned cherry pie filling. What the recipe lacked in culinary complexity it more than made up for in yumminess. This recipe is a great nod to that recipe.
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Gluten Free Blueberry Cheesecake Squares
- Yield: 9 bars
- Diet: Gluten Free
Description
These gluten free cheesecake squares topped with an irresistible blueberry topping are a crowd-pleasing favorite dessert everyone will love!
Ingredients
- Cooking spray
- 2 cups fresh blueberries, frozen blueberries, or frozen wild blueberries
- 6 tablespoons sugar, divided
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 orange, zested and divided
- 2 cups gluten free animal crackers (I used Glutino) or gluten free ginger snap cookies
- 1/4 cup melted butter or melted coconut oil
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- 1 (8-ounce) block cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1 cup vanilla Greek yogurt (I recommend using a very thick yogurt)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9-inch square baking dish or baking pan with cooking spray.
- Add blueberries, 3 tablespoons sugar, water and half of orange zest to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until very thick (sauce will thicken some upon standing , but should be mostly thick enough at this point to spread over bars). Remove from heat, and let cool.
- Meanwhile, add animal crackers to a food processor and pulse until crushed into crumbs. Add 1 tablespoon sugar, butter, and egg, pulsing until combined. Press mixture into bottom of prepared dish. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool.
- Add cream cheese, Greek yogurt and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar to a large bowl. Beat with a hand mixer/ electric mixer on low speed to medium speed until smooth. Using the back of a spoon, spread evenly over cooled crust. Top cheesecake layer evenly with wild blueberry sauce. Cover, and refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving.
- Category: Dessert
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 bar
- Calories: 240
- Sugar: 15 g
- Sodium: 140 mg
- Fat: 15 g
- Carbohydrates: 20 g
- Fiber: 1.5 g
- Protein: 5 g
