I was invited to try out Miss Jones Baking Company products and to create a recipe to enter into their Bake it Better Challenge. For the Bake it Better Challenge all you need to do is use one of Miss Jones baking mixes as a start for your recipe – and then you make it your own!
I decided to make Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars with a Sugar Cookie Crust – using Miss Jones Baking Co Sugar Cookie Mix! The top is like a creamy pumpkin cheesecake filling on top of a crunchy sugar cookie crust. Portable pumpkin pie, if you will.
Miss Jones Baking Co sent me a few goodies for my participation in the contest – including this cute BAKER BABE shirt and matching purple spatula.
I only used the Sugar Cookie Mix this time around. I’ll have to save that Cinnamon Sugar Frosting for another treat.
For my cookie base, I simply used the sugar cookie mix plus one stick of melted butter.
It formed a coarse dough once it was mixed together.
And I pressed the crust into a 9×13 baking dish.Since I hadn’t tried this before, I decided to pre-bake the cookie crust before adding the pumpkin filling. I baked it at 400 degrees for about 8 minutes.
The crust becomes a bit crunchy in the end after – almost a little too hard – so in the future I might skip this step and see how it turns out.
For the filling, I used the filling recipe from Serious Eats called Extra-Smooth Pumpkin Pie. Except I did not make the filling in a food processor. I thought that was unnecessary and also my food processor sucks anyway. I just did everything in a regular bowl and used ARM STRENGTH (awww yeah).
Sugar and spice makes everything nice.
It does turn out to be OH SO SMOOTH.
And the final result: a light tasting pumpkin bar that makes me think of pumpkin cheesecake.
Don’t mind me and my dirty smeared plate over here. It still tastes delicious even if it isn’t styled pretty.
If you’re interested in entering the contest for Miss Jones Bake it Better Challenge, just grab yourself one of their baking mixes from your local grocery store. Vons, Albertson’s, Target, and Sprouts all carry Miss Jones Baking Co products so you can get in on this contest before the contest ends on Friday. You could win a $1,000 Visa gift card + wonderful baking supplies for entering PLUS they will donate $1 to charity for each entry received. How awesome is that?!
* I was SUPPOSED to post this on Monday but SOMEONE (ahem) around here slacked off a little. Sorry, folks.
** Disclaimer: I received complimentary baking mixes plus participation gifts in exchange for this post. All content and opinions are my own.
