French apricot cream cheese bars
24 Bars
Ingredients
| Quantity | Ingredient | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | pack | French Vanilla Cake Mix |
| ⅓ | cup | Unsalted butter or margarine |
| 1 | large | Egg |
| 8 | ounces | Pkg. cream cheese,softened |
| ¼ | cup | Granulated sugar |
| 1 | teaspoon | Vanilla extract |
| 1 | large | Egg |
| 12 | ounces | Jar apricot preserves* |
Directions
CRUST
FILLING
* I used Bing Cherry Preserves and they were delicious.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease 13x9-inch pan. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, butter and egg; Mix only until crumbly.
Gently spoon 1½ cup of the crumbled mixture into a mixing cup; set aside for topping. Press remaining crumb mixture on the bottom of the greased pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a smaller mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and egg; beat until smooth. Set aside.
Spread preserves evenly over hot crust. Then spread cream cheese mixture evenly over preserves.
Sprinkle reserved topping mixture over cream cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees F. for an additional 30 minutes or until topping is light golden brown. Cool to room temperature, then chill until serving. Store in refrigerator. Note: The dough must be crumbly. I had to add a bit more flour to the reserved 1 ½ cups to get the proper consistency as I mixed it beyond the crumbly stage and a smooth dough started to form. You don't want balls of dough, but lumpy CRUMBS! From the recipe files of suzy@...