Apple featured prominently in a couple of recent desserts here. The first of those was Friday a week ago, when a joyful gathering of dearest friends of the Roediger House occurred, and our sweet finisher was apple crisp cheesecake bars. I went to work on this marvel mid-day, prepping the brown sugar shortbread crust, whipping up the chilled rolled oat crisp topping, mixing together the vanilla bean cheesecake layer, and dicing a mix of Granny Smith and Honeycrisp apples with sugar and spices. Once assembled, into the oven it went and by early afternoon it was ready to cool down and then be chilled. It’s been just shy of three years since I made a batch of these, and this was only their fifth appearance here. It was music to my ears to hear the high praise from the assembled crew, which signals pretty clearly that once every three years is not enough.
We ended up with only a couple of cheesecake bars left, but with fellow Tar Heel Kelly coming for the succeeding Sunday night meal, I took inspiration from its insufficient remains and created a variation for a different dessert: apple chai cream cheese strudel. Starting with refrigerated puff pastry saved me a lot of trouble; then I cooked some finely-diced Honeycrisp apple with plenty of brown sugar and cinnamon, and I whipped cream cheese with sugar and egg yolk and chai spice. The rolled-out puff pastry was sliced just so, in order to create an elegant strudel braid to seal it all up. A nice egg wash and some turbinado sugar sprinkled on top set it up for a proper baking time. I finished it off with an eggnog glaze just before serving up our plates to round out our Sunday dinner hour—and our bellies, I suppose!
"Apple Crisp Cheesecake Bars," from Meghan McGarry of ButtercreamBlondie.com. [Published 03 October 2014 / Updated 09 December 2023]
Adapted from "Easy Apple Strudel with Puff Pastry,” by Hyegyoung K. (Holly) Ford, founder of the blog Beyond Kimchee. [Published 15 September 2021 / Updated 02 June 2025]
Chai-Spiced Sweetened Cream Cheese Filling loosely adapted from "Blueberry Cream Cheese Pastry Braid," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 16 February 2014 / Updated 25 April 2025]
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