These Strawberries and Cream Bars start with a cake mix and end up a beautiful and unique treat! They’re the perfect summer dessert that you can customize with your favorite fruits!
Strawberries and Cream Bars
Sometimes I want dessert for breakfast.
But supposedly dessert is to be eaten after dinner or something.
So you can find me on any given morning hiding from public judgement in my closet cursing the candy companies for making their wrappers so loud. Inevitably, I will be found because of the super-sonic-noise-making Snickers wrapper, and I try to convince either my children or my husband, through garbled speech and chocolate drool , that I was in the closet looking for a missing flip flop. My children haven’t caught on yet, although my husband is hot on my trail.
I am clearly being stymied by dessert prejudices across the land.
Anyway, I believe I have found a way to hurdle the rules that are clearly trying to cease culinary progress.
Add fruit.
Yep, that’s it.
Add fruit to dessert and bah-jammm! Instantly breakfast affirmed.
And these bars take it a step further with the addition of cream cheese.
Because cream cheese is the breakfast approved cheese. Who makes these rules?!
So let’s get down to it…Strawberries and Cream Bars.
How to Make Strawberries and Cream Bars
They start with a cake mix. Isn’t that great?
Just mix it up with an egg and some butter.
It will be very dense…
Press it into your pan, partially bake it and top it with a simple cream cheesey/cheesecakey layer…
Slice up some strawberries and spread those on top…
Then crumble up the reserved crust mixture and sprinkle on top of the strawberries…
When it’s done baking it will look like this…
Let it cool and cut it into squares.
And then eat your dessert anytime of the day.
Because no one is the boss of you!
Strawberries and Cream Bars
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 24 bars 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Description
These Strawberries and Cream Bars start with a cake mix and end up a beautiful and unique treat! They’re the perfect summer dessert that you can customize with your favorite fruits!
Ingredients
- 1 box vanilla cake mix (18.25 oz, 1 lb)
- 1/3 cup butter, room temperature
- 2 eggs, divided
- 3 cups sliced strawberries
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°
- Spray 9×13 with cooking spray
- In large bowl combine butter, one egg and cake mix. Mixture will be stiff. I used my hands to combine the dough.
- Reserve 1 cup of mixture for topping and set aside.
- Press the remaining mixture in the bottom of the pan and bake for 10 minutes.
- While crust is baking, slice the strawberries into approx 1/4″ slices.
- In a mixing bowl beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and remaining egg until smooth.
- Spread cream cheese mixture over top the partially baked crust.
- Evenly arrange the sliced strawberries over the cream cheese mixture and the sprinkle with remaining crust.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes until center is set and crumbs on top turn golden brown.
- Cool completely on wire rack and chill at least 30 minutes before serving.
Notes
Store in an airtight container in refrigerator.
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 131
- Sugar: 4.8 g
- Sodium: 48.9 mg
- Fat: 11.5 g
- Carbohydrates: 6.2 g
- Protein: 1.4 g
- Cholesterol: 45.4 mg
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I definitely don’t judge you–I could eat cookies, blondies or popcorn ANY time of day. Or pizza. It just works like that, this crazy world we live in.
These look AWESOME, btw, but you know that. You’re a dessert guru. You make the rules, candy bar breakfast rules included!
These look so amazingly delicious!!!
These look totally acceptable for breakfast….there’s fruit! They look amazing!
Yummy! Those are gorg. And they sound delish. Perfect breakfast food!
I agree…adding fruit definitely turns dessert into breakfast. (and adding veggies turns it into lunch and dinner!) Love these.
These look awesome 🙂
These look absolutely delicious and totally breakfast-y 🙂
Looks amazing Shelly! What an easy but decadent-looking treat.
Love me a good cream cheese bar! mmmm, so good. And with the shortcut of cake mix and the awesomeness of strawberries, these are perfect!
Pretty much anything strawberries and cream will be awesome, but this looks soooo fabulous! Yum!