Strawberry Cheesecake Bars

The cookie bottom gets very hard if pre-baked. The baked cheesecake layer will just fall off, and it is very hard and brittle when cutting it into squares. I think I am not going to bake the cookie layer 1st, or bake it for 5 minutes. The recipe is fine with a 1/2 cup of sugar. Other than that, these were received very well :)

Thanks for the no pre-baking tip. The cookie does get overdone. Cutting the bars is difficult, the hardest part is the first cuttings. What I do is, I use a disposable foil pan with parchment paper lining the bottom and grease on the sides. Prepare the bar cookies as usual. After cooling, put the pan in the freezer to really get the filling to firm up. Then, peel the sides of the foil pan down, using the parchment paper, slide the sheet of cookies out of the pan and onto a cutting board. Now that the cookies are out of the pan, they are much easier to cut. To keep the filling from sticking to the knife when cutting the bars is simple. Use a long knife, (one that is longer than the sheet is wide) so you can just push the knife through the bars without slicing. Prepare the knife by coating with shortening or butter and coating with sugar, this keeps the filling from sticking to the knife. Coat with more sugar as you cut the bars. No need to use more shortening as the knife will already be sticky. Bars come out much neater. Down side, fewer messed up bars for the baker to eat. The shortening and sugar is also a good idea, used on the spoon or scoop when you are using measuring out drop cookies