Apple Crumble Cheesecake Bars with Salted Caramel Sauce
Delicious, easy to make Apple Crumble Cheesecake Bars with Salted Caramel Sauce that's an alternative to apple pie. With three amazing layers of sweet walnut shortcrust crumble, creamy cheesecake, apples + salted caramel sauce you will impress every fall dessert lover!
Servings: 16 pieces
Ingredients
Walnut Shortcrust Dough
- 225 g butter at room temperature
- 80 g brown sugar
- 30 g sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 250 g flour
- 60 g walnut flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
Cheesecake Filling
- 300 g cream cheese at room temperature
- 1 egg
- 70 g sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Apple Filling
- 3 medium-sized apples I used Gala
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
Salted Caramel sauce
- 100 g sugar
- 90 g whipping cream
- 30 g butter
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Walnut Shortcrust Dough
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a 20x20 cm baking pan with parchment paper, or grease and flour it.
- Mix the butter with both sugars and vanilla extract for a minute or until the mixture comes together.
- Add the flour, walnut flour and salt, combine to a uniform dough.
- Put half of the dough to the fridge. At this point, you can add coarsely chopped walnuts to this half of the dough for more crunch and walnut flavor.
- Distribute and press the other half of the dough in the prepared pan. If it's a bit sticky press it with a wet spoon or hands.
- Bake the dough for 15 minutes or until it's a golden brown color.
- Set aside.
Cheesecake Filling
- Mix all the ingredients until they are well combined.
Apple Filling
- Peel and cut the apples to little cubes or slices.
- Mix them with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Assemble
- Pour the cheesecake filling on top of the baked dough.
- Distribute the apples on top of the cheesecake mixture.
- Take the other half of the dough from the fridge and distribute little bits of it all over the apples.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.
- Leave to set and cool for 3-4 hours.
Salted Caramel Sauce
- Melt the sugar in a high heavy bottom pan on medium-low heat. Stir every so often if the caramel starts to brown too much in one place.
- Heat up the cream until simmer.
- When the sugar is all melted, remove from heat, slowly pour some cream in and stir it in. Be careful as the mixture will bubble a lot. Slowly pour all the cream in and put the caramel back on medium heat. Cook for about 3 more minutes.
- Remove from heat, mix in the vanilla and salt.
- Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then mix in the butter with an immersion blender for a smooth caramel.
- Drizzle the apple bars with caramel just before serving as the caramel will make the top crumble softer after a while.
Notes
- You can use almond flour instead of walnut flour.
- Make your own walnut flour by mixing whole walnuts in the food processor.
- Use some coarsly chopped walnuts in the crumble topping for more crunch and walnut flavor.
- You can use store bought caramel but home-made is always much better.
- Check the post to see which apples I recommend using.
- Store the bars in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 4 days or in the freezer for 3 months.
- Make sure to leave the bars to cool as they will be quite soft straight from the oven.
- Reheat the caramel in the microwave or on a bain-marie before drzzling if it's too set.
Tried this recipe?Mention @FreakyBlond or tag #prettysweetblog!