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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These turned out great, simple and delicious. Great with a cup of tea for breakfast 🙂
Okay, I can totally see this as a breakfast item. But I wanted something full-out dessert, so substituted a can of Ducan Hines Caramel apple pie filling for the fresh strawberries and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream before consuming its warm homey goodness.
My husband and I were craving something sweet and there was nothing in the house, so I came to your site to see what I can make. I found that I had all the ingredients I needed to make this! OMG it is super yummy! My husband ate 4 squares! I had to hide the rest otherwise he just may have eaten the whole batch! I think I discovered that he likes cookies/bars made with cake mixes. Because these are hid absolute favorite. http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/cookies/melt-in-your-mouth-toffee-pecan-cookies-3.html
Shelly, my classroom of young children (ages 3-6) made these for their Mother’s Day luncheon as the dessert. Their favorite part was making the crust! They were delicious and a light way to end the meal.
Made this tonight – couldn’t wait for it to cool down and it was awesome warm!
I used two punnets of strawberries and one of blueberries. Mmmm-mmmmmmm!
These are SO pretty! And from the list of ingredients…I’m sure they’re delicious, too!!
Made these today! Delicious!!! Whole family loved them.
So glad to hear you liked them 🙂
I made these yummy breakfast bars today with blueberries and nectarines (because that was the fruit I had), and also used gluten-free vanilla cake mix. They r lovely!! Wish there was room to post pic.
These bars look awesome, Shelly! Dessert for breakfast is always approved in my house. 😉
I made these using Pineapple Supreme cake mix, and substituted chopped pineapple instead of strawberries and it was A.MAZ.ING. Thanks so much for the recipe!