chocolate chip cheesecake cookie bars.

As of recently, I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen. I really enjoy it! I seem to really find peace in there. I have very little experience cooking or baking, as I had never really done either until high school, but I'm learning! And enjoying every bit of it.

Here's a peek at my new favourite thing to bake:

Image from Heat Oven to 350.
Unfortunately I did not take any photos of my own baking (they would be less attractive anyway..) since I was too busy eating it afterward.. haha!

I have tried two different recipes from here and here.

I tried the recipe from Heat Oven to 350 first, so I will talk about it first..
This recipe was very easy to follow, and it gave useful tips for spreading out cookie dough on top of the cheesecake layer. I would have just tried to spread the cookie dough and scraped off the whole cheesecake layer and made a mess if not for the tip! The only modification I made was that I used all butter instead of part butter and part shortening, only because I did not want to buy both. And the only thing that worries me about this recipe is that I don't know what cider vinegar is. Nor do I own or, nor could I find it at the grocery store. I had a friend bring it over. Do I need this? Should I try this recipe and forgo the cider vinegar? Will it still work? What does cider vinegar do? Does anyone know?

All in all, I really liked this recipe, it was very easy to follow and produced very tasty bars.

I'm not quite as fond of the recipe from My Baking Addiction..
As I was mixing the ingredients for the cookie dough together, I realized that I was mixing all dry ingredients together, and you can't beat together all dry ingredients.. right? So I added an egg as an afterthought. I mean, most cookie dough uses eggs right? But then I ended up with something that was too wet! So I couldn't flatten the cookie dough afterwards! So I added more flour until I could pick it up.. In the end I'm not sure they turned out right, as the cookie actually tasted a little flour-ey. And because this one uses a different crust (the first recipe is just a sandwich of cookie-cheesecake-cookie; this one is crust-cheesecake-cookie), it was softer on one side than the other, and I found it actually harder to bite into without it crumbling.

I don't think I will try this recipe again. The first one worked out much better.

I am so glad I found these chocolate chip cheesecake cookie bars though! They are oh-so-tasty! I am not normally a big fan of cheesecake as I find the consistency to be too thick, but I find that the cookie part really balances it out, and I really like the taste of the two together. They are the perfect pair!