Do you ever buy raspberries that go soft the moment you get them home? They’re perfect here — their darker, inkier color shows up beautifully in the swirl.
- 1 cup (110 grams) graham or digestive cracker crumbs (about 7 sheets of grahams)
- 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 3 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, melted
- 6 ounces (170 grams) fresh or frozen raspberries, defrosted
- 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup (130 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 pound (2 8-ounce or 225-gram packages) cream cheese, at room temperature
- 3 large eggs
- Finely grated zest and juice (1 to 2 tablespoons) from half a medium/large lemon
Crust
Swirl
Cheesecake
Line bottom and sides of an 8×8-inch rectangular baking pan with a large piece of parchment paper pressed into the corners and up the sides.
Make the crust: Combine crumbs, sugar, butter, and salt in a bowl with a fork until evenly mixed. Press firmly into the bottom of your prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make raspberry sauce for swirl: Process raspberries with sugar in a food processor or blender until smooth. Pass puree through a fine sieve into a small bowl and discard the seeds. Set aside.
Make the cheesecake: Beat cream cheese with sugar until fluffy, then beat in eggs, one at a time until thoroughly mixed, scraping down the sides and bottom of your bowl between each addition. Beat in lemon zest and juice. Pour cheesecake batter over the prepared crust (still warm from the oven is fine). Food processor method: Place sugar, then cream cheese (cold is fine here; cut into chunks) in work bowl of food processor and blend until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, scraping bowl down between each. Add zest and juice and blend, scraping again.
Assemble: Transfer raspberry sauce to a squeeze bottle, piping bag, or a zip-lock bag with a tiny corner snipped off, and squeeze raspberry sauce into the cheesecake batter in two ways: First, pressing the tip into the batter to deposit raspberry in the lower half of the bars (essentially making “underwater” blobs of raspberry sauce all over) and then placing droplets all over the top surface. [Tips: Use all of the sauce, even if it seems like a lot. And don’t worry if it’s runny or makes a mess. It’s impossible for this not to come out pretty!] Use a toothpick or skewer to swirl the raspberry sauce decoratively. Transfer bars to the oven.
Bake the bars: For 40 to 50 minutes, or until the cheesecake batter jiggles just a little when the pan is shimmied. Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes, then transfer to the fridge to chill the rest of the way.
To serve: Use the parchment paper to carefully lift the cool bars out of the pan and onto a cutting board. Cut into 16 squares. Swipe the knife clean between each cut for neatness. Dipping the knife into water can help too.
Do ahead: Bars keep in the fridge for 5 to 7 days.
