Red, White & Blue Cheesecake Bars -- The Sweetness of What We Build Together

The strawberries in the small patch by the south fence began to ripen this week — half a pint Tuesday, a full pint Friday, two quarts by Sunday. The strawberry patch is small (about ten feet by four) and is not what you would call a serious berry operation, but it produces enough each year to give me strawberries for a few weeks of fresh eating and a few jars of jam and a couple of pies, which is exactly the right amount for one man living alone. The patch was planted in 1992 and has been replanted from runners every few years and is the third generation of the original plants, the genetic inheritance of the original berries continuing in the patch even as the individual plants come and go.

Made a strawberry shortcake Saturday — the proper kind, with biscuit shortcakes split and buttered and layered with macerated strawberries and fresh whipped cream. The shortcake recipe is in Helen's notebook — page 47 of the 1979 notebook, which is the volume I have been working through methodically for the last year — and the recipe is essentially a rich biscuit dough with a tablespoon of sugar in it, baked in rounds the size of my palm, served slightly warm. The strawberries got a half-cup of sugar and a hour of macerating to release their juice, and the cream went into the bowl from the cold pantry and was whipped to soft peaks just before serving. I ate two shortcakes at supper and did not feel guilty about it. June strawberry shortcake is one of the things you do not measure your servings of.

The blog post for the week was the shortcake, with a small note at the end about the patch and its history and the third-generation berries. The comments came in from people asking about the biscuit recipe and from people asking about the patch (whether they should plant strawberries themselves, what variety, when to plant), and I answered each one. The questions about whether to plant berries are always the same question, which is whether the cost-benefit analysis works out, and my answer is always the same, which is that the cost-benefit analysis does not work out if you measure cost and benefit in dollars but works out beautifully if you measure them in the experience of standing in your own backyard in June and eating a strawberry off the plant warm from the sun. There is no replacement for that experience. People who have it once tend to plant strawberries. People who have not had it tend to ask why I bother. I do not argue with the latter group. I write the post for the former.

The Friday vets coffee — Tom Albany came back, his second Friday now, and the room received him as one of the regulars without anyone explicitly saying he was a regular. Phil had asked Tom to bring a story about his first kitchen as a married man in 1995 — Phil collects these stories from all of us in turn, the small openings into the lives we lived after the service that none of us discusses — and Tom told a long funny story about trying to make a roast chicken for his new wife and forgetting to remove the giblets. The room laughed. I laughed too — a different kind of laugh, the recognition laugh, the laugh of a man who has also forgotten to remove the giblets and who has the wife's recipe card to prove it. After the gathering broke up I told Tom about Helen's note, about the giblet check that has now happened forty-five Thanksgivings in a row, about the way a single mistake in a kitchen can become a family ritual that long outlasts the person who made the mistake originally. He laughed. He said: I should write that down. I said: yes. You should.

The shortcake was Saturday’s supper, and it was exactly right — but by Sunday, with two full quarts of strawberries on the counter and Tom’s laugh still somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted one more thing from this week’s harvest. These Red, White & Blue Cheesecake Bars came out of that mood: something that lets the berries carry their own weight against something cool and rich, something you could cut into squares and set out for a room full of people without ceremony, the way Phil sets out coffee on Friday mornings. The shortcake is the thing you make for yourself; this is the thing you make when you want to bring the week to someone else.

Red, White & Blue Cheesecake Bars

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes (plus 2 hours chilling) | Servings: 16 bars

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 16 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
• 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
• 1/4 cup seedless strawberry jam, warmed slightly

Instructions

1. Prepare the pan. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the sides for easy lifting.
2. Make the crust. Combine graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar, and melted butter in a bowl and stir until the crumbs are evenly moistened. Press the mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then set aside to cool slightly.
3. Mix the filling. Beat the softened cream cheese and 1/2 cup sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth and no lumps remain, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract and sour cream until just combined.
4. Bake the bars. Pour the cream cheese filling over the cooled crust and spread it evenly to the edges. Bake at 325°F for 30—35 minutes, until the edges are set and the center has only a slight jiggle. Do not overbake.
5. Cool completely. Remove from the oven and let the bars cool to room temperature in the pan, then transfer to the refrigerator and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight before cutting.
6. Top with berries. Brush the chilled surface lightly with warmed strawberry jam to create a glaze. Arrange the sliced strawberries and blueberries across the top in whatever pattern pleases you — tidy rows or the loose abundance of a garden, both are correct.
7. Cut and serve. Lift the bars from the pan using the parchment overhang, transfer to a cutting board, and slice into 16 squares with a sharp knife wiped clean between cuts. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 218 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 20g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 148mg