Cheesecake squares

I have been on a cooking hiatus, thanks to my mom being here and cooking all the yummy Indian food! But, I have baked a bit and last night, I was inspired by this recipe to make cheesecake squares. I changed it up a bit, because I had a a little less than a lb of sugar but when I measured it, it was about 2 cups whereas the recipe said 4. I stuck with what I had and trust me, it was sweet enough.

What I had:

• box of lemon cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted in microwave
• 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
• 13.5 oz confectioner's sugar
• Optional: white chocolate baking chips and flaked coconut

 What I did:

• Mixed the cake mix, 1 egg and butter together till it formed a dough. Patted it down in a greased 9X13 glass baking pan.
• Sprinkled the coconut and white chocolate chips over the dough.

•  Mixed cream cheese, sugar and remaining eggs with a hand mixer. Poured it over the dough/coconut/chips and spread evenly.

• Baked at 300 degrees for an hour.
• Let it cool for 15 minutes before cutting into squares.

It didn't look pretty when it came out, but it sure was yummy. By this morning, there was only a half of the pan left!

Easy lemon bars

I wanted something sweet and I had a lot of cake mixes and cream cheese, so I did a search on All Recipes, and found a bunch of recipes for lemon bars. I ended up looking at a few and mixing them into 1 recipe and they turned out really good, so here it is.

What you need:

• lemon cake mix
• egg
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• lemon juice
• lemon zest

What you do:

• Mix the cake mix, egg and oil together. It'll be dough like, not cake batter like. I added zest of one lemon and a tablespoon of lemon juice because it didn't smell lemony enough to me. Put aside about a cup of this mix and pat the rest of it into an ungreased 9X13 pan.
• Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.
• Let it cool.
• This is very important, let it cool.
• Beat the cream cheese, sugar and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice till smooth. It should be spreadable.
• Make sure the bottom layer is cool before you try spreading the cream cheese mixture on top.
• Spread the cream cheese mixture on top.
• Take the dough you'd put aside and sprinkle evenly on top of the cream cheese mixture.
• Bake for another 15 minutes.

Cut into squares, diamonds, octagons, however you like them best. They are delicious. If cut into squares, they make 24 servings and each serving is a 3 points plus value, for my Weight Watchers friends.