Cream Cheese Lemon Bars with Kit Kat Crust

Our orthodontist is offering to pay the kids around here $1 for each pound of Halloween candy they'll fork over. My kiddo is currently frantically digging out the candy that he's willing to part with so he can make a little cash. My advice for him is to look for the heavy stuff (but keep the candy bars, of course).

If you're looking for ways to use up your abundance of Halloween candy, I've got a couple of delicious ideas for you. The first involves Kit Kats. You'll need about 14 mini Kit Kats (or 5 regular-sized) for Cream Cheese Lemon Bars with Kit Kat Crust.

The Kit Kats make the crust, of course. Simply done, they're demolished in the food processor and pressed into the bottom of a square pan- no additions needed.


The lemon filling is made creamy with the addition of cream cheese, and it's topped off with a lemony crumble.

It bakes up nice and bubbly and lightly browned. You need to let it cool completely. Chilling overnight in the refrigerator is best for easier and cleaner cutting.

I put parchment in my pan and then lifted the whole thing out to cut. I find that's a better way to do it then trying to dig out individual pieces from a tight fit in the pan. And yes, these bars are as moist and caramelized looking as those edges indicate.

When I asked my husband what he thought of the bars he said: "They're really, really good, but I wish more of the chocolate flavor came through." That would be nice but they're lemon bars, dear.

I give you permission to raid your children's giant bags full of Halloween candy- there are bound to be 14 Kit Kats in there! And maybe if you show your children what you can do with their Kit Kats, they might just render them willingly.

(Look for another recipe utilizing leftover Halloween candy in my next post...)

This recipe can be found HERE.