White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Bars

Wow. That's a bad picture. I made this for a Memorial Day BBQ- Gotta love those Monday holiday BBQ's! To be fair, this gem was a sliver of the last piece at the end of the evening when I remembered I needed a picture. The last piece, split in half! The only alternative was this:

For the failure it was photogenically, it certainly was not a failure to the palate! Impressive, especially since I did my best to mess it up. Seriously, even though it's really not a difficult recipe, I was having a crazy hard time today for some reason. So, if you were one of the ones who got some today, you'll probably far surpass my offering just by having the plan to make this! Yikes! Enough about how bad this turned out- It is actually one of my favorite recipes! I mean, c'mon: White chocolate- check. Raspberry- check. Cheesecake- Check! Eat it all day long- Check! Oops, did I just admit to that? ;)

12 oreo cookies, finely crushed

2 tbsp butter, melted

3 oz white chocolate, divided{1 square = 1 oz}

2 pkgs cream cheese, softened

1/2 C sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1/4- 1/3 C preserves {I like it thick!}

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cookie crumbs and butter; press onto bottom of 8" square pan. Melt 2 oz of chocolate as directed on package. Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with a mixer until well blended. Add melted chocolate, mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust. Bake 25-28 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool 5 minutes.

Warm preserves in microwave 30 seconds or just until soft. Spread over cheesecake. Melt remaining chocolate and drizzle over preserves. Cool cheesecake. Refrigerate 4 hours.

Just for giggles, I'm going to share with you how my actual attempt at this went today. {#1}For posterity and in hopes you will all understand {#2} I make as many mistakes as anyone else and {#3} most things will survive even if it's not quite right...

For starters, I only had frozen cream cheese {yeah, who does that?? Me. For occasions just like this.} and since I decided to make this about 2 hours after I needed to start making it, it was not thawed. Nuke it! Still, not quite the same. But I press on, doubling the recipe cause this only makes an 8" pan. Seriously, what's everyone else going to eat? So I kinda burnt the white chocolate, but stir it enough that the chunks of burnt chocolate mostly dissolve making the chocolate slightly grainy. Add sugar, vanilla, now eggs one at a time{whew, took 4 eggs, had exactly 4 eggs! Lucky break!}, double check I've properly doubled everything- OH CRAP! I didn't double the cream cheese! Ya know, from 5 steps ago! So back to the freezer {I'm out of cream cheese, now, BTW}, pop in the microwave, ok, that's 'thawed' enough. If thawed means mostly not frozen... Mix that in, pour over the crust and bake. My oven sucks, so about 15 minutes after it should have been done, it finally was. Look at that, cool and chill for 4 hours? Well, party starts in 1 & 1/2, so back to the freezer! Oops, I'm out of white chocolate {man, this cleaned my cupboards!}. Guess we'll just drizzle semi-sweet chocolate over top. Nuke that. Kids wake up from napping, so I stir the mostly melted chocolate as I come talk to my son and SPLASH! Melted chocolate on my carpet! *SIGH* Seriously debate crawling back into bed. Nah, then it's just me and the kids and there is no 'crawling back to bed' with two little ones jumping and crawling all over! Luckily, it came out. Whew. Done. Did it seriously take me almost 2 hours to make this?? So much for Mom Time during nap time... Wait! There's more... It was still not quite chilled by the time the dessert comes out. Yuummm... room temperature cheesecake! It's just not right! One of these days I'll have a do-over and get good pictures and prove that, even as good as everyone thought it was, it should actually be much better! Ranting done. Why are you still reading this??? I'm going to bed. ;)