Easy Lemon Cheesecake Bars made with a boxed cake mix! You won't believe how easy this dessert recipe is to make and how great it tastes.

Lemon Cheesecake Bars

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My mother in law LOVES all things lemon. You may have noticed that I have been making a ton of lemon recipes lately...this is my way of convincing her to stay home and not go to the store. We are bringing over food for my mother in law and my husband's 93-year-old grandmother every week right now,

Baking and cooking for other people has been a ton of fun. It has pushed me to play with recipes and work with flavors I don't always bake with. We have a ton of lemon recipes on the website but somehow I had never shared these Easy Lemon Cheesecake Bars.

If you have been following the site for a while I know it won't surprise you that these cheesecake bars with lemon are made with a cake mix. One of my favorite things to do is make recipes that cut out steps or make life just a little bit easier.

I remember what it was like to work 40+ hours outside of the house and then come home and want to cook/bake but also feel like if you didn't curl up and sleep you were not going to be a functioning human.

I remember trying to bake ALL THE THINGS on the weekend while still doing laundry, prepping for the next week, grocery shopping, and all the life things that have to happen over the weekend

Living this life helped me start adapting recipes to make them take less time and be easier.

Ingredients

Lemon Cake Mix
Egg
Vegetable Oil
Cream Cheese
Sugar
Lemon Juice and zest

Recipe Tips

Fresh lemon juice tastes the best but you can use bottled lemon juice if you don't have any fresh lemons. Just make sure to start with half the juice and add it in slowly since bottled lemon juice can be really strong in flavor.

We used an 8x8 baking dish for this recipe. You can use a 9x13 if you want but the cake base will be significantly thinner. If you use the larger pan make sure to adjust your baking time and check it often,

Don't forget to preheat oven to 350 degrees!

The dough is pretty crumbly before you put it in the baking pan.

Make sure to line your baking pan with parchment paper so the bars are easier to remove.

Make sure your parchment reaches as far up the sides as possible. This will help make sure the cheesecake filling does not overflow the parchment paper.

Make sure the cheesecake layer is completely cooled before cutting the lemon bars. This will help the lemon filling layer to keep its shape when serving.