Egg Nog Bars

Something miraculous has happened–I finally have a recipe to share for the first time in a long while! A lot of the cooking I’ve done lately, if I’ve done any, has been very hodge-podge meals made from stuff I have on hand and not any true recipes, so I’m very excited to finally have something to share.

Every Monday from about the end of September to the middle of December, then once again starting in January and going to the middle/end of March, we hold Soup Club at work. Each week, four people make soups and one person makes dessert. I signed up to do dessert this week, and since I was already making cookies for our Christmas cookie exchange, I decided to make another recipe that fit the season.

These Egg Nog Bars are absolutely simple to make and so delicious. I’m not quite satisfied with how mine turned out, but with how well they were received I will certainly be making them again and can hopefully perfect them to my liking!

The recipe is taken from Jen’s Favorite Cookies and can be found here.

Egg Nog Bars

Crust:
– 2 cups gingerbread crumbs
– 1/2 cup butter

Egg Nog Filling:
– 8 oz softened cream cheese
-1/2 cup egg nog (not homemade)
– 1 T. floor
– 1/2 cup sugar
– 1 egg + 1 egg yolk
– 1 tsp. rum extract
– 1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Combine gingerbread crumbs with butter, and mix until all crumbs are moist. Press your crumb-butter mix into the bottom of a 9×13 pan and bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes.

While the crust is baking, combine the cream cheese, egg nog, flour and sugar. Add egg and egg yolk and mix well. Add extract and nutmeg, mix.

Once the crust is ready, pour egg nog mixture over baked crust and return to oven. Bake an additional 25 minutes, or until the center is set and not loose when jiggled. Allow to cool before serving.

For my version, because I lack a food processor (and lacked the energy to crush up enough cookies), I bought Betty Crocker gingerbread mix and mixed that with the butter instead and it turned out just fine. This will obviously result in a slightly different, more cookie-like crust than one made with crumbs from already-baked cookies, and if you want to go for a more authentic cheesecake feel to these bars–as they are technically egg nog cheesecake bars–you may want to go the crumb & butter route. My filling consistency was also a little off sadly; I could have incorporated the cream cheese better but could not for the life of me find the electric hand mixer so I had to do it the old fashioned manual way. I did the best I could this time around. Considering these were still a hit with my co-workers, there’s no where to go but up next time I make them!

I’d love to share what I made for the cookie exchange with you but I had intended to get a finished product shot this morning after they settled and my alarm decided it wasn’t going to go off this morning so I had to hurriedly pack them before dashing out of the house 😦 Perhaps I can make more after the holidays to show them off!

Let me know if you make these bars yourselves and how they turn out for you 🙂

Until next time, stay well, stay beautiful! xx